"Do you want metro or not?", MP Tewari seeks clarity from UT Administration

Chandigarh MP and former Union Minister Manish Tewari has asked the UT Administration and the state governments of Punjab and Haryana to clarify whether the city along with its periphery towns of Mohali, New Chandigarh and Panchkula need the metro rail project or not.

Tewari posed this question after the Union Government replied to his question in the Lok Sabha on Thursday that even after over two years of constitution of the Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (UMTA), comprising Chandigarh, Punjab, and Haryana, the detailed project report of the Chandigarh metro rail project has not been prepared.

“In response to my question about the latest status of the Chandigarh metro project, the answer underlines the utter inefficacy of the Unified Metro Transport Authority. Despite having been in existence for over two years, they have failed to even prepare a detailed project report (DPR),” the senior Congress parliamentarian told The Tribune over the phone.

He said that the time has come for the Chandigarh Administration and the Governments of Punjab and Haryana to clearly state whether they want a metro project for the four cities of Chandigarh, Mohali, New Chandigarh and Panchkula or not.

“Procrastination, vacillation, obfuscation and dissimulation will no longer do,” he asserted, while stating that the bottom line is, “do you want metro or not? Yes or no?”

Advocating the need for the metro rail project, the local MP said the four cities need a metro rail project as soon as possible. “It is not a connectivity project alone, but an economic multiplier to leverage the commercial potential of the region,” he opined.

Training guns on the bureaucracy, Tewari added that in the past 11 years, Nagpur, Mumbai, Kochi, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and many more cities across the country have operationalised their metro projects while Chandigarh, Mohali, New Chandigarh and Panchkula have been stymied because of sheer bureaucratic inertia.

Replying to his unstarred question in the Parliament, the Union Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Tokhan Sahu said the Chandigarh Administration has informed that the UMTA was constituted on April 28, 2023, and it has so far held three meetings — in July, December 2023 and September 2024.

On whether the government has reviewed the findings of the latest RITES-led feasibility committee constituted and whether any joint proposal has been submitted by Chandigarh, Punjab and Haryana to the Union Government regarding the metro project, the Union Minister informed that the respective UT Administrations are responsible for planning, initiating and developing urban transport infrastructure, including integration amongst various modes of public transport in the UT.

“The Central Government has formulated National Urban Transport Policy (NUTP), 2006, Metro Rail Policy, 2017, and Transit Oriented Development Policy, 2017, which act as a guide to the state governments/ UT Administrations for the integrated planning and implementation of urban transport systems,” Sahu said, while revealing that the Centre considers financial assistance to urban rail-based system based on feasibility of the proposal and availability of resources, as and when posed by the concerned state governments and UT Administrations.

The Union Minister clarified that no DPR of metro project in Chandigarh has yet been submitted to the Central Government.

RITES yet to submit revised report

The consultant for the Chandigarh metro project RITES is yet to submit the revised scenario analysis report (SAR) for further deliberations. On June 17, the UT Administration had discussed the SAR submitted by the RITES and had sought for the revised report, which is still awaited.

In its initial report, RITES had submitted key elements of the project, including transport demand assessment, traffic analysis zones and highway network, development and validation of the base year travel demand model, projections of future travel demand, train operation plan, power supply system, geometric design parameters, MRTS corridor characteristics, capital cost estimates, means of finance, and the assessment of operational and economic viability.

It had also shared calculations of the Financial Internal Rate of Return (FIRR) and Economic Internal Rate of Return (EIRR), along with an analysis of the economic costs and benefits of the proposed metro project.

However, it lacked explanation regarding the methodology used to extrapolate daily ridership from PHPDT, absence of a comparison between actual and projected ridership figures as per the CAG report, missing data on the operational ratio, and the reliability of software modeling projections.

Additionally, no conversion factor indicating how many people are expected to board the metro was provided, the justification for the 3% annual traffic growth rate was not explained, inconsistencies in the economic analysis figures, especially in the scenario summaries, were not addressed, and the impact of isolated corridors on the overall EIRR of the network was not clarified.