Soon, Gurgaon to get metro link to airport

The long-pending project of connecting Millennium city in Gurgaon with Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport may soon see the light of the day. Subhendu Ray reports. New line

The long-pending project of connecting Millennium city in Gurgaon with Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport may soon see the light of the day.

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The ministry of urban development is likely to call a policy-level meeting next week to finalise the project, said ministry sources. The new line, however, will have no connection whatsoever with the existing Airport Metro express.

"We hope a final decision on the project will be taken at the meeting. The ministry of urban development has suggested four alternatives - general metro, high-speed metro, extension of soon-to-be-launched Gurgaon's rapid metro and a regional rail transit system - of which the most feasible plan would get a nod," said SD Sharma, director (business development), Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Limited (DMRC).

The DMRC has already prepared a detailed project report (DPR) for a 12-kilometre separate line, which was submitted to the urban development ministry recently. Sharma said once the ministry takes a final call on what kind of rail it wants to run, the route alignment of the proposed line will be sent to the group of ministers for approval.

The issue of using public-private-partnership for this project - which was initially conceptualized as the extension of the existing Airport Metro express - will also be discussed in the meeting. The directors of DMRC, representatives of Haryana urban development authority and officials from the ministry of urban development, among others are likely to attend the meeting.

Reliance Infrastructure, the concessionaire for the existing Airport Metro express, was reportedly hopeful of getting the project as changing the operator would not have been feasible.

But DMRC's unhappiness with the PPP model is being cited as the reason behind the cancellation of the line's extension. DMRC chief, Mangu Singh had earlier said: "We don't think that PPP was a successful experiment." Sources said that DMRC will oppose a PPP model for this project in the meeting.