By our correspondent, Gandhinagar/Ahmedabad, 5 November 2014

Central government has granted permission for allotment of usage of open land situated next to existing Botad-Sabarmati meter-gauge line for Metro alignment.

This is a big news of relief for people of Ahmedabad and local administration.

Railway ministry has granted permission to construct elevated corridor and 7 stations of Metro rail on railway land located on east side of Botad-Sabarmati meter gauge line in Vejalpur-Nava Vadaj stretch. With new alignment, people in APMC to Shyamaprasad Mukherjee bridge area and also Jivrajpark area will get benefits of Metro rail.

With metro station in Jivrajpark, western Ahmedabad’s Shyamal cross roads, Bhudarpura, Manekbag hall and some areas of Satellite will get benefit of Metro project. Not only this but people from Ambawadi, Navrangpura, Vadaj and Nava Vadaj etc will also get benefit of Metro rail.

With new alignment, 7 out of 5 stations will get benefit of railway land while rest of the land will be available for parking.

The project has been designed in a way that people living in east and west both sides of railway line will be able to access metro stations easily. Moreover, Metro alignment’s length will increase by two km and one additional station.

Sharing the details, spokesperson ministers Nitin Patel and Saurabh Patel said that in a meeting held between Railway Board chief Hemantkumar and Chief Minister Anandiben Patel in which Metro rail project’s vice chairman and managing director and western railway’s higher technical officers some major decisions were taken.

-In principal permission for construction of Paldi-side metro elevated corridor on eastern direction of Vejalpur-Jivrajpark-Vadaj railway line. In-principal permission to erect pillars in railway limit.

-Western Railway will consider granting permission to 7 Metro stations on Jivrajpark-Vadaj stretch but only if they are designed in a way that there’s no pillar in center.

-Wherever there are encroachment in railway land, the state government will help railway officials to remove it for its use in Metro rail project.

The ministers said that after railway’s permission, MEGA’s technical team sought opinion of railway’s higher officers and prepared a design to build 7 stations and elevated corridor on eastern side of railway line on APMC-Vejalpur, Vejalpur-Shreyas crossing, Parimal Underpass, Gandhigram railway station-Old high court and upto Nava Vadaj. A high power committee headed by Chief Minister gave approval to this change and moved a proposal before high power committee on 8 October.

On 18 October, a union cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi granted permission to Rs. 10,773 crore north-south corridor APMC-Motera and east-west corridor Thaltej-Vastral gam (total 36 km). Now railway department has given permission to use open land.

Spokesperson ministers said that as a Chief Minister Shri Narendra Modi had time an again made representations before the central government for allotment of this unused land for proposed Metro rail project. Even then Urban minister Nitinbhai Patel and Chief Secretary of Gujarat had also in their correspondence with centre had made same demand repeatedly.

After Shri Narendra Modi went to centre, he conveyed railway department to give priority to this issue as it is connected to important project of Metro. Thus this issue, pending with centre since 2012 has been solved.

Chief Minister Anandiben Patel has thanked Prime Minister Modi and BJP government in centre for granting permission to use open railway land located on both sides of railway track.