Title - Kochi Metro: crucial Board meeting today

The crucial Director Board meeting of Kochi Metro Rail Ltd. (KMRL) on Friday is expected to take a call on the legal issues reportedly delaying the handing over of the metro’s work to the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC).This is expected to clear the air about the uncertainty about when work on the project will pick up steam. Allegations were rife that attempts were being made to keep the DMRC away from the project.A few days ago, E. Sreedharan, Principal Adviser to the DMRC, is said to have written to the Transport Minister and the KMRL that the agency would pull out of the project if a solid decision was not taken at the Board meeting. The State government is yet to issue an order despite its Cabinet deciding in January to award the work to the DMRC.He also put in black and white how the Central Vigilance Commission norms applied only to private firms and not the DMRC, “the sole agency in the country which has got fourth-generation metro-rail technology.” This technology is being adopted on lines seven and eight in Phase III of the Delhi Metro. This latest technology was available for Kochi also, DMRC sources said.Elias George, Managing Director of KMRL, spoke of how the Board’s technical committee suggested updating the detailed project report prepared by the DMRC (in 2005) so that state-of-the-art technology was available. “Matters like communication-based train controls, smoothening curves that have a radius of 90 metres or less and fixing the power lines in between the rails (third-rail traction) instead of having them overhead are likely to come up for discussion at the Board meeting.”

Sources in the KMRL said the State government was expected to prevail over the Union Cabinet on how the work could be awarded to DMRC, “overlooking norms of the Central Vigilance Commission”. The legal opinion of the former Chief Vigilance Commissioners and Supreme Court lawyers have been sought. This is because there is no precedent of such a mega project being entrusted to another government agency sans global tenders, they said.

JICA factor

The Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is yet to respond to a letter sent on Monday on whether it insists on global tender since the State government wants to entrust the work to the DMRC on a turnkey basis, they said.

On news reports that global tenders were not called when the KMRL awarded the tender to resurface over a dozen city roads to the Kerala State Construction Corporation and when it entrusted Cusat with doing a study on parking lots attached to metro stations, they said KMRL entrusted the works to another State government agency and hence the norms were not applicable. “Though there were other agencies with the expertise, Cusat had the human resources to do the parking study.” Sources said the Board was also expected to decide on matters such as the design of pillars and the number of coaches on each train and their width.