Chennai: The constant tussle between the Narendra Modi-led Union government and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) government in Tamil Nadu has now spilled over into Chennai’s key Phase II Metro works. The state government has alleged that the Centre has consistently overlooked requests from the state to partially fund the ongoing works of Chennai’s Metro Phase II project.
On Friday, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi and submitted a memorandum with multiple demands, including the PM’s intervention in the allocation of funds for the Rs 63,246-crore metro project in Chennai.
The chief minister said work on the Chennai metro has been delayed due to the state’s fiscal constraints, pushing the completion deadline to December 2028 from December 2027.
Stalin also sought the PM’s intervention in the release of funds for the Samagra Shiksha Scheme as well as reaching a permanent solution to ensure the rights of Tamil Nadu fishermen in the dispute with Sri Lanka and the release of the fishermen apprehended by Colombo.
The 118.9-km Phase II Metro project, which began construction in 2020, aims to ensure seamless connectivity in the city’s suburbs, such as IT hub Sholinganallur and the northern neighbourhood of Madhavaram, which has seen an average 4.38 percent rise in population between 1971 and 2001.
Currently, Chennai city has two operating metro lines—Corridor 1, from Washermenpet to the Chennai International Airport and Corridor 2 connecting Chennai Central to St. Thomas Mount—covering a total length of 45.046 km. Union Home Minister Amit Shah laid the foundation stone for the project in November 2020.
“Despite promises, the Union government has not released any funds for the Phase II Metro project. So far, we have spent Rs 17,000 crore of which 11,000 crores were by Tamil Nadu and the remaining amount was sourced from agencies, such as Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), World Bank etc. This is a partisan attitude from the Central government,” DMK spokesperson Salem Dharanidharan told ThePrint.
He added that the metro works will not face any further delays due to the fund crunch because the state government has always been able to muster up the resources in similar situations in the past.
Sushil Kumar, the Press Information Bureau officer at the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, did not respond to requests for comment.
The Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL) did not immediately respond to ThePrint’s requests for comment via phone calls and email. Public Relations Officer Annadurai K was also unavailable for a meeting. This report will be updated if and when they respond.
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Recommended Central Sector Project
In the 2021 Union Budget, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the central counterpart funding will be provided for the completion of the Phase II project.
However, the finance minister told the media last week that Phase II is a state project and should be funded by the Tamil Nadu government.
State Finance Minister Thangam Thennarasu had earlier this month pointed out that the Public Investment Board had recommended the project as a Central Sector Project in 2021 and sought the Union government’s share of Rs 7,425 crore. The Public Investment Board is a division of the department of expenditure in the Ministry of Finance that assesses and approves public-funded projects and schemes.
At the Public Investment Board (PlB) meeting held in August 2021, under the chairmanship of the finance secretary and the secretary (expenditure), it was recommended that the central and the Tamil Nadu governments would each fund Rs 7,424.9 crore, or 15.4 percent of the total cost, while Rs 33,593.5 crore would be sourced as loan assistance from bilateral agencies, show minutes of the meeting, accessed by ThePrint.
The recommendations are yet to be approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA).
The response to an RTI (Right to Information) application dated 9 September, filed by Chennai-based RTI activist Dayanand Krishnan and accessed by ThePrint, revealed that the state hasn’t received any funding for the project since 2021.
Responding to a public grievance appeal filed by Krishnan, Sarojini Sharma, Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) and urban secretary of the Ministry of Urban Affairs, said the project is currently under consideration by the government of India.
“For such cost-intensive projects, the approval process entails extensive examination/appraisal at different levels in central government and approval of such projects depends on the feasibility of the project and availability of resources,” she said in the response dated 18 September and seen by ThePrint.
In December 2023, in response to a question by DMK MP P. Wilson in the Rajya Sabha, then Union minister of urban affairs Kaushal Kishore also said that the Phase II project was under appraisal by the central government.
Centre’s funding to other state metro projects
According to the 2017-Detailed Project Report (DPR) by the Rites Ltd, the Phase II Metro project is made up of three corridors: Corridor-3, from Madhavaram to SIPCOT (45.8 km); Corridor-4, from Lighthouse to Poonamallee Bypass (26.1 km); and Corridor-5, from Madhavaram to Sholinganallur (47 km).
It has 128 stations, and, according to the website Metro Rail Today, is the second longest under-construction metro in India after the 146.083-km stretch of the Mumbai Metro’s Line 3.
According to the RTI response received by Krishnan, the Union Budget 2024-25 allocated Rs 4,597.42 for Line 3 of the Mumbai Metro project of which Rs 4,246.44 crore has been released.
Likewise, the Union government has released Rs 1,600 crore of the estimated Rs 3,517.67 crore for the Delhi Metro; Rs 1,399.48 crore of the Rs 2,591.11 crore for the Bangalore Metro project Phase 1, 2, 2A and 2B; and Rs 559 crore of the estimated 1,020.12 crore for the Ahmedabad Metro project Phase I and II.
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)