Metro fate to be decided today

Fate hinges on PIB meet
The Times of India

Bangalore: The fate of Bangalore’s dream project — Metro Rail — will be decided at the crucial Public Investment Board (PIB) meeting in New Delhi on Friday.
At the meeting, to be held in the Union ministry of finance office, a veritable battery of secretaries, including ministries of finance, programme implementation, urban development, railways and planning commission will take the project apart at the seams. This will be the second round of the PIB meeting, after the first on June 26.

“We have done our homework and are approaching the meeting in a businesslike manner. We hope to be successful,’’ project company Bangalore Mass Rapid Transit Limited (BMRTL) managing director K.N. Shrivastava told The Times of India.

The state has also sent a strong team comprising chief secretary B.K. Das, finance principal secretary Sudhakar Rao and urban development secretary Shamim Banu to field questions from the PIB, along with Shrivastava himself.

The PIB had raised three issues in the first meeting — the Centre was not inclined to give Bangalore Metro tax exemptions like its Delhi counterpart; the Railways wanted broad gauge instead of standard gauge; and PIB wanted to know how Metro would deal with cost overruns.

BMRTL has tried to work around the tax exemption issue, by pointing out that all options are more expensive. They want to avoid the Railways by seeking to get the Metro project covered by a Karnataka Act, giving the state total jurisdiction. Cost overruns are to be factored into a 10 per cent safety net in the project cost.

Meanwhile, Malaysian consortium Kencana Kasifa Transit System said it had submitted a proposal for participating in the project.