A meeting of the Director Board of Kochi Metro Rail Ltd. (KMRL), on Tuesday, is unlikely to discuss the extent of involvement of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) in the Kochi Metro.
This is because a committee headed by Union Urban Development Secretary Sudhir Krishna and the Chief Secretaries of Kerala and New Delhi as members is yet to state whether the DMRC’s resources can be spared for executing the metro.
KMRL’s MD Elias George had on Saturday said that the DMRC would have a seminal role in the project.
DMRC officials had said that the agency’s Kochi unit had ample number of technical personnel to oversee the metro rail’s works, and they needed very little help from its head office in New Delhi.
The Director Board will discuss the status of land acquisition for the Kochi Metro, which requires a total of 40.40 hectares of government and private land.
The immediate land requirement is widening of the Town Hall-Madhava Pharmacy Junction stretch into a four-lane road as part of the metro rail’s preparatory works. The KMRL has handed over nine cents of land to the DMRC for this. A few more cents of land is required.
Compensation
Section 4(1) notification has been published for acquiring many plots for the metro project (mostly to locate metro stations) along its Aluva-Tripunithura Pettah alignment.
The district-level purchase committee and the State-level empowered committee are expected to fix the compensation that has to be paid to the land owners, KMRL sources said.
Even if land owners resist the acquisition, the Revenue Department will take advance possession of their lands after 80 per cent of the compensation is handed over to the owners.
To a question on when the KMRL will sign a memorandum of understanding with the National Highways Authority of India to widen narrow stretches on the Aluva-Edapally stretch of NH 47, the sources said discussions were on with the agency and they had to vet the details.
The aim is to provide motorists with a four-lane NH when the construction of the metro rail is on.
The evolving organisational structure of KMRL too will be discussed at the meeting. The agency is in the process of recruiting technical experts having experience in metro rails or Railway. Its human resource policy too has to be framed, and the Director Board is expected to decide and approve this.
This is the third meeting of the new board of directors – five of them representing the Union government and five others the State.
Moreover, this will be the first board meeting for the new Chief Secretary Jose Cyriac.
