Kolkata Metro: A case of systematic delays
STUCK IN A RUT Fresh trouble brewing for Kolkata’s East-West Metro as Japan International Cooperation Agency threatens to pull out from the project
has the status of being an independent railway zone, took 12 years to run its first metro train on a 3.4 kilometre stretch from Esplanade to Bhowanipur.
The Delhi Metro is scheduled to expand its network to 300 kilometres by 2018, but there are no clear time frames for the completion of the Kolkata Metro expansion.
Of the five extension lines worth `12,236 crore that were announced by Mamata Banerjee during her tenure as the railways minister, only `1,606 crore was utilised till 2014. The annual outlays for these projects have gradually decreased.
“Project implementation is being somewhat delayed because of a shortage of funds. There are land encroachment issues as well,” said Radhey Shyam, general manager of the Kolkata-based South Eastern Railways.
More intriguing is the story of the East-West Corridor – which proposes to link the 14.58 kilometre route from Howrah Maidan to Salt Lake Sector-V at an estimated cost of `4,874.58 crore.
GC Mitra, who had an aborted stint as a project chief engineer, recalls, “Expensive machines were imported and civil work was begun, when it was noticed that the alignments suggested in the detailed project report (DPR) were faulty. A station at Mahakaran, if built, would have damaged vintage residential buildings in Kolkata’s central business district adjacent to Brabourne Road. People also woke up to the need to relocate 10 big transformers of the Kolkata Electric Supply Corporation located in the vicinity.”
“We have proposed a change in alignments, which the Railway Board is considering. Nothing has happened in the last two years”, said AK Jha, managing director of the Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation (KMRC).
The East-West Metro Project has remained stalled because neither of the stake-holders is willing to bear the additional cost of `340 crore that the alignment change entails.
The more structural problem is that none of the stakeholders is willing to own up the KMRC today.
THE TUG OF WAR
The big ticket infrastructure project has remained caught in a slugfest between the Centre and the Trinamool Congress-led West Bengal government. Earlier, the urban development ministry and the West Bengal government had a 50-50 share in the project.
In 2012, under pressure from West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, 74% stake was transferred to the Railways ministry, while the urban development ministry retained 26%.
“The project has come to be surrounded by procedural, institutional, administrative and political complications,” admitted an official.
Meantime, the JICA is understood to have threatened to pull out of the project, citing inordinate delays on the part of the implementing agencies to claim funds sanctioned by it.
(Inputs Moushumi Das Gupta)