Telangana High Court on Friday issued notices to State government and the South Central Railway (SCR) in a PIL petition seeking operationalisation of second phase of Multi Modal Transport System (MMTS) trains.
The petition was filed by social activist and CPI(M) city secretary M. Srinivas Reddy requesting the court to instruct the SCR general manager to start running MMTS trains on the completed sections of tracks under phase-II linking Hyderabad, Secunderabad and Cyberaabd localities. The petitioner also wanted the court to declare the non-completion of total MMTS phase-II lines and not running MMTS services on already completed tracks as illegal and arbitrary.
Lawyer N.S. Arjun Kumar appearing for the petitioner said that out of the total 84 km of MMTS second phase, works on 62 km were completed a few months ago. Even the railway safety authorities gave clearance for running MMTS trains on these stretches and they were commissioned for traffic.
However, services on these routes were not started as the State government failed to release its share of funds for the project, Mr. Arjun Kumar told the court. An amount of ₹808 crore was spent on the project so far. As per the agreement, Telangana government should have borne the expenditure to the tune of ₹606 crore.
But it contributed only ₹129.02 crore. According to the petitioner, the SCR had incurred an expenditure of ₹678 crore on the project. The dispute over sharing the costs of the projects between the State government and the SCR had become a stumbling block in starting MMTS services under second phase, he said.
The bench posted the matter for December 17.
