HYDERABAD (Metro Rail News): The engineering and construction company Larsen & Toubro (L&T), which constructed the Hyderabad Metro Rail, is not an automatic choice for constructing the Airport Express Metro project.
According to the Telangana government’s decision to implement it as a state-owned project in line with Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s aim of making Hyderabad a global city, the proposed 31-km high-speed metro rail project will be carried out by Hyderabad Airport Metro Limited.
A HAML official said that they would float fresh tenders for the project but that this would be a lengthy process. “L&T has no role in the Airport Express Metro; HAML would execute the project.
Hyderabad Metro Rail Limited (HMRL) managing director, N.V.S Reddy, said that the L&T had no role to play in the Airport Express Metro project and that it was an utterly state-owned project.
“The ORR has a dedicated Metro Rail right of way (RoW), and the Airport Express Metro corridor will connect to the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport at Shamshabad via this dedicated RoW. This corridor, which spans 31 kilometres, is expected to cost around `6,250 crore. In addition, several large global and national corporations have established or are establishing massive campuses along this stretch,” explained N.V.S. Reddy.
The then-government of undivided Andhra Pradesh gave the Hyderabad Metro Rail Project contract to L&T. L&T created an SPV called L&T Metro Rail (Hyderabad) Limited to construct the project on a design, build, finance, operate, transfer (DBFOT) basis.
The company and the then-AP government signed a concession deal on September 4, 2010, and financial closure was finished on March 1, 2011. The State Bank of India led ten banks that approved the project’s loan demand. This public-private partnership (PPP) for non-power infrastructure has the greatest money tie-up in the nation.
