Centre yet to give a penny for Chennai Metro Rail phase 2

CHENNAI: In what could trigger a political storm in Tamil Nadu, the BJP-led union government on Thursday qualified the phase 2 of the Chennai Metro Rail (CMRL) project as “highly cost-intensive” and said that the project’s approval depended on feasibility and resource availability.

The minister’s ambiguous statement has raised doubts about the project for which the state government has already allocated Rs 21,000 crore since 2021.

The union government also admitted on the floor of the Parliament that it had not allocated a penny for CMRL’s phase 2 project, the foundation stone for which Union Home Minister Amit Shah laid here on November 19, 2020. Ironically, the GoI has allocated funds generously to similar metro projects executed in many BJP-ruled states and even Congress-ruled Karnataka and AAP-ruled Delhi during the same period.

Replying to an ‘unstarred’ question raised by Central Chennai MP Dayanidhi Maran (DMK) in the Lok Sabha Thursday, Union Minister of State for Housing and Urban Development Tokhan Sahu told the Parliament that the Tamil Nadu government proposed 118.9 km route length CMRL phase 2 at an estimated cost of Rs 63,246 crore and the approval for such “highly cost-intensive” projects depend upon the project feasibility and availability of resources.

Minister Tokhan Sahu added that the project was being implemented as a state-sector project, and the Tamil Nadu government currently bears the expenditure.

The minister’s reply to a related supplementary question had enough to provide fodder to the ruling DMK-led INDIA bloc in Tamil Nadu. Detailing the various metro projects approved and funds disbursed for such projects by the GoI in the last five years, the minister informed the House that the 2021-22 fiscal was the last time the Centre had ever allocated any money for a metro rail project in Tamil Nadu and that too for the Phase-I under operation now.

According to the LS reply, TN received Rs 1,380.4 crore in 2019-20 and Rs 51 crore and Rs 935.78 crore in the following two financial years for the Phase-I of CMRL, while “zero” is the allocation for the 2022-23 and 2023-24 fiscals.

BJP-ruled Gujarat received well over Rs 6,400 crore crore for two phases of the Ahmedabad metro project between 2019-20 and 2023-24 alone. Another Rs 4,700 crore has been allotted for the Surat Metro project from the 2020-21 to the 2023-24 fiscal years.

During the five years, four metro projects have been approved for Uttar Pradesh, which received over Rs 3,000 crore and Rs 5,000 crore for Agra and Kanpur metro projects. Opposition-ruled Kerala (Rs 146.74 crore in 2022-23) and Kolkata (Rs 634.53 crore in 2021-22) also received funding only once in the five years for their metro projects.