Metro may become costlier

Not just buses and autos even metro riders may have to shell more money for a ride to their destination, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: May 9, 2007, 23:53:43 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Not just buses and autos even metro riders may have to shell more money for a ride to their destination. It is not because Delhi metro has decided to hike fares but result of the Empowered Group of Ministers’ decision that security charges should be part of the operational cost.

The Empowered Group of Ministers (EGOM) meeting held recently approved the Urban Development ministry’s proposal that the cost of security should not be included in the project cost. Instead, it should be ‘treated as an operational cost.” It means, according to an Urban Development ministry official, that the cost of the security will have to be passed on to the consumer. “DMRC recovers its entire operational cost from the riders,” he added.

Jittered by the decision, DMRC officials said that the ministry of Home Affairs is yet to decide on the EGOM’s verdict. The group had stated that the security related expenditure for public transport services like metro would require to be looked into by the ministry of Home Affairs as a “sovereign function”.

The official said, “ No final decision has been taken. We are yet to hold a meeting with Home Ministry on the issue,” he said. The MHA bears the annual expenditure of Rs 27 crores for providing CISF security at metro station. DMRC only bears Rs 16 crore, a one time cost for providing security infrastructure.

UD ministry officials, however, say the MHA may have to re-think on its financial commitment to the DMRC, as other cities would ask for similar concession for its metro service. Metro projects are coming up in Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad.

In the light of DMRC may have to bear the heavy charges for deploying CISF, the EGOM has suggested that Delhi metro should consider having its own security arrangement in near future. DMRC officials, however, refused to comment on this.

That’s is not the only blow for Delhi. The EGOM has also decided that the metro line between New Delhi Railway Station and IGI Airport would not get any tax concessions from the government like the entire metro’s second phase except Central Secretariat Badarpur corridor. DMRC would be saving about Rs 1,100 crores in the second phase of Rs 7,500 crores because of the tax concessions.

The airport line to be constructed on Public Private Partnership would be run by a private consortium for a period of 30 years with private partners bringing international quality rolling stock and signalling system. “The price of travelling in the airport metro would be much higher than the other metro lines,” a government official said.

The government has also taken a policy decision that no tax concessions would be given for construction of any metro line in India, except the already approved lines of second phase of Delhi metro. Hence, the cost of construction of metros in Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bangalore would be much higher, although the government is considering of granting loans to these cities at reasonable interest rates.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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