Maharashtra fumes over metro act change

While the Centre is pushing for the Delhi Metro Railways Amendment Bill 2009, which will give Railways the supreme power to run all state metro routes, three states including Maharashtra have expressed strong displeasure over the bill.

According to sources in the state government, chief minister Ashok Chavan has also written to prime minister Manmohan Singh, requesting him to keep the amendment on hold.

The Centre, recently, proposed key changes to the Delhi Metro (operation & maintenance) Act, 2002, and the Metro Railways (construction of works) Act, 1978. What irked the state governments were certain points in the amendment, which were detrimental to the progress and eventual functioning of most metros across the country — especially in Bangalore, Chennai and Mumbai.

The amendment says that many state governments have opted for setting up high capacity metro rail systems in their states to meet the growing urban transport demand. On their requests, metro rail system has already been approved by the government of India for Bangalore in April 2006 and Delhi’s extension to Noida and Gurgaon in October 2006. Besides this, the metro system is at different stages of consideration in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, etc.

The management of such system is proposed through a government owned company similar to Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC). The extensions to Gurgaon and Noida are being implemented by DMRC, but at present there is no legal cover for these extensions.

Since these extensions are to be completed before October, 2010, in view of Commonwealth Games and the Bangalore metro is also to be provided proper legal cover, it is considered necessary to urgently provide an appropriate legal cover for development, construction, operation and maintenance of metro railways in various cities in India.

According to a top state government official, the amendment has also suggested that the general manager for all the state-run metro rail systems has to be decided by the central authorities.

“As per the amendments, the commissioners of metro railway safety should be under the administrative control of the chief commissioner of railway safety. Also, the commissioner shall be deemed to be the civil court for the purposes of section 121 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872. This clearly means that the central authorities want more control over metros in cities like Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore. This is something we just can’t accept,” said the official.

He added that chief minister Ashok Chavan has written to the Centre to withhold the present amendments. “There was not even a single communication from the Centre asking for consent. We feel it is unethical on part of the central officials to get control over the state-run metro systems,” said the state government official.