Twenty years after conceptualisation, multiple route changes and successive cost escalations, cases of irregularities and consequent change of guard, the Phase-I of Ahmedabad Metro is nearing completion and will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in August, ahead of the Gujarat Assembly elections scheduled to be held later this year.
Despite its commissioning in August, the 40-kilometre Phase-1 that will criss-cross Ahmedabad will remain incomplete as three metro stations and a 1.4-kilometre route are scheduled to be completed only by January-March 2023. Phase-I will connect Vastral Gram in the eastern periphery of Ahmedabad with Thaltej Gam in west, while APMC Vasna in South will be connected to Motera in North.
SS Rathore, Managing Director of Gujarat Metro Rail Corporation (GMRC) — the SPV for the Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar Metro rail project, says the lockdown due to the Covid pandemic and legal hurdles associated with land acquistion set the project back by a couple of years.
A 6.5-kilometre stretch between Vastral Gam and Apparel Park on the East-West Corridor in East Ahmedabad that was launched by PM Modi ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections has around 800-900 users a day. The 12-minute one-way ride on the “first priority stretch” costs Rs 10.
The second priority stretch on the North-South Corridor between APMC Vasna and Shreyas Crossing (Western Ahmedabad) was scheduled to be inaugurated in 2021. However, debt-ridden infrastructure company IL&FS — earlier in charge of building the section — expressed its inability to continue and was allowed an exit in December 2018. The company, however, returned to the project just eight months later.
About 95 per cent of Phase-I stands completed as of this month, and officials of the GMRC are testing the trains and equipment installed on both the corridors. “This is being in done in preparation of the mandatory inspection by the Commissioner of Railway Safety (CMRS), due mid-July. The process could take about a fortnight and a certification at the end of it will clear the project for commercial operations. We had promised to ready the project by August,” said Rathore.
An official flag-off ahead of the crucial Gujarat Assembly elections could fare well for the BJP government in urban areas of the state where a second metro project is being built in Surat and feasibility study of constructing “lite metros” in four other cities — Rajkot, Vadodara, Jamnagar and Bhavnagar — is being done. The announcement for the same was made in Union budget in 2021 and, subsequently, the Gujarat government allocated Rs 50 crore in the state budget for beginning the projects.
Most of the metro route in the 600-year-old walled city, which has the UNESCO World Heritage City tag, will go underground, as deep as 22 metres.
The construction cost of the underground metro line is almost 2-3 times more than the elevated one. The underground section has been made along a densely populated stretch with a high built-up area and inadequate road width.
The metro route passes under monuments protected by the Archaeological Survey of India such as Rani Rupamati mosque, Qutbuddin Shah’s mosque, Kazi Mohammed Chisti Masjid, Delhi Darwaja and Kalupur Darwaja.
The underground section has four stations — the deepest being Gheekanta, located 22 metres below the ground. The others are Shahpur, Kalupur Railway station and Kankaria East that are at 13-14 metres below the ground. These stations will have island platforms with the platform being at the centre and metro rail tracks on either sides of the platform. It is a three-level station with entrances and ventilation shafts at the ground level, ticketing and a concourse in the middle tier and platforms at the lowest level.
By the end of August, a phenomenal Rs 12,700 crore would have been spent in constructing Phase-1, an escalation of Rs 2,000 crore from March 2015, when the project groundwork began. Ahmedabad Metro, after completion, will cost approximately Rs 300 crore for every kilometre constructed.
Ahmedabad Metro began commercial operations in March 2019 on the 6.5-kilometre stretch between Vastral Gam and Apparel Park with six stations. Though over 7.1 lakh passengers have taken the metro till now, the monthly ridership has never crossed the March 2019 ridership figure of 38,137. Officials say a majority of users are those taking joyrides especially during weekends.
The ridership has remained restricted too, as the operational stations are only on the eastern side of the city. The underground section on the same stretch will not only link the western part of the city, but will also connect the route to the North-South Corridor, which will run parallel to the Sabarmati river at many places and connect the Northern parts of the city with Narendra Modi stadium and surrounding areas in Motera in the South.
It is this North-South Corridor that will further extend to GIFT City and Gandhinagar under Phase-II of the project. The incomplete sections in Phase-1 include a 1.4-kilometre stretch between Thaltej and Thaltej Gam, the western-most stretch of the now partially operational East-West Corridor. The other parts where work commenced late include the underground station of Kankaria-East and the Sabarmati metro station (which will provide one of the two crucial interlinkages for passengers travelling on the planned Bullet train and via the Indian Railways network).
“The land required for these areas was acquired late due to legal hurdles,” Rathore added. On the East-West Corridor, there was an integration planned with the Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) at Rabari Colony and Helmet Cross Road in the drive-in area. There is an integration with the Indian Railways and Bullet Train at Kalupur, which has Ahmedabad’s main train station.
On the North-South corridor, the rail, road, and metro meet at Sabarmati close to the Gandhi Ashram with the Indian Railways station at Gandhigram, with Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation and the BRTS at Ranip station. The Old High Court station on the Ashram Road, which is Ahmedabad’s oldest commercial artery, will be the interchange station for metro passengers looking to shift corridors.
TIMELINE
The Detailed Project Report (DPR) for Ahmedabad Metro has been prepared or altered at least five times. Originally, the DPR for the project was submitted by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) in 2005, which included a North-South corridor covering APMC Vasna-Income Tax-Sabarmati-Akshardham and an East-West Corridor traversing Kalupur – Income Tax and Thaltej.
The DPR had predicted that the stretch between Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar would cost Rs 4,300 crore and carry 6.75 lakh passengers daily by 2010. In the same DPR, DMRC also presented a study on the upgradation of the regional rail system for Ahmedabad district which included a rail service between Barejedi-Kalupur-Kalol and Kalupur-Naroda.
Subsequently, the DMRC was once again commissioned by the Gujarat Infrastructure Development Board (GIDB) in 2009 to prepare a DPR for metro connectivity from Gandhinagar to the proposed flagship finance hub in GIFT City and the Ahmedabad airport. It was also asked to review certain portions of the corridors proposed in the 2005 DPR. Accordingly, a study was carried out by DMRC and a report was submitted in 2010.
The Gujarat government reorganised the Metro Express between Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad (MEGA) in 2011 and later appointed retired IAS officer Sanjay Gupta as chairman of the special purpose vehicle MEGA. Under Gupta, the metro routes were redrawn twice and in 2012, for the first time, the state government tried to construct the North-South corridor alongside the Sabarmati-Botad meter-guage railway line that was part of Bhavnagar division of the Western Railway. However, it was only after a regime change in New Delhi, that western railway granted approval for the alignment.
Hurdles
Once Sanjay Gupta quit in August 2013, the project got engulfed in a Rs 211-crore scam where Gupta was arrested by Gujarat Police and jailed. Gupta and other officials of MEGA were accused of taking commission from suppliers and floating dummy firms.
Even the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) took note of the developments happening under MEGA under Sanjay Gupta. CAG highlighted how the project incurred a Rs 445 crore “infructuous expenditure”. Gupta passed away in Lucknow in April 2021 after contracting Covid-19.
“Even before the DPR was prepared (in August 2012) and approved by the Board of Directors, MEGA started issuing purchase and work orders from June 2011. A total of 1,868 orders were issued between June 2011 and September 2013, at a cost of Rs 583 crore,” the CAG stated in its report in March 2016 and pointed out how Gujarat government had infused Rs 1100 crore as share capital for MEGA between May 2011 to March 2014.
Meanwhile, work related to alignment, planning expenditure, construction of depots and bridges, casting yards, rolling stock, protection wall and survey and data collection for Phase-1 were all stopped in September 2013, CAG observed.
New beginnings
In August 2013, MEGA under IAS officer Vijay Nehra requested DMRC to redraw the earlier DPR submitted by it. The DPR was redrawn due to “lacunas” in earlier ones. It was proposed that the construction work for the upgraded project will start in June 2014 with a targeted completion by March 2018. It was estimated that 4.96 lakh people will take the Ahmedabad Metro daily in 2018 with one train leaving every five minutes during peak hours and 8-20 minutes during lean hours. This ridership was slated to increase to 6.69 lakh by 2021.
In 2014, as Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister, MEGA was turned into a 50:50 special purpose vehicle owned by the Government of India and the Government of Gujarat. However, it was not until March 2015, when the then Chief Minister Anandiben Patel laid the foundation stone for the project. By then, the project cost for constructing only the Ahmedabad portion of the metro rail skyrocketed to Rs 10,773 crore. The Phase-II of the project, linking GIFT City and Gandhinagar, was another Rs 5,384 crore.
In January 2019, MEGA, under retired IAS officer IP Gautam, was once again reorganised and renamed as Gujarat Metro Rail Corporation which was the parent body for all future metro projects in the state.