Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has decided to withdraw from the task of demolishing and rebuilding the girders and deck of the damaged Palarivattom flyover as it faces delay and uncertainty about when the work can be executed, sources said.
The decision was taken in the aftermath of the High Court of Kerala ordering on Thursday that load test be done on the structure within a three-month period.
The DMRC’s Kochi metro-related works are at its fag end and the agency will no more be able to sustain the establishment cost for a relatively small work. Already, staff are being reduced at the agency’s Kochi office, since its mandate would end when the metro’s 1.5-km Thykoodam-Pettah stretch is commissioned by mid 2020, sources in the agency said.
As per revised schedule, the DMRC will complete all civil works on the stretch by February, while other works will get over by May. There is no need to keep reserve personnel for the Palarivattom Flyover rehabilitation work, due to the uncertainty about if and when it would begin and whether there would still be delay beyond the three-month period. The agency would shortly communicate to the State Government its decision to withdraw from the rehabilitation work, they added.
The DMRC had on Monday entrusted the work to rehabilitate the crack-ridden Palarivattom flyover to Kozhikode-based Uralungal Labour Contract Cooperative Society Ltd., following a tender process. This was after the State Government entrusted it with the work in October. The ₹18.77 cr work was to demolish and rebuild the flyover’s girders (except the two central spans) and deck, while the pier caps and piers of the existing structure had to be strengthened. Interestingly, the DMRC’s decision to pull out of the flyover work comes within hours of the first meeting that it held with Uralungal cooperative society, on when and how to begin the work.
Traffic through the flyover had been banned in May, following inspection by a team of structural engineers from IIT-Madras.
They confirmed the presence of numerous cracks above the permissible limit of 0.3 mm. This was reiterated in a report submitted by ‘Metro man’ E. Sreedharan. The first public pronouncement of cracks on the structure was made by an expert team deployed by Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, in October 2018. The flyover built by RBDCK was commissioned in 2016.
