Srinagar, Oct 03 (KNS): Congress leader Sanjay Sapru has described the return and rejection of the Jammu and Srinagar Metrolite proposals from New Delhi as the culmination of nearly a decade of bureaucratic inertia, administrative indecision and institutional failure, demanding that responsibility be fixed for the prolonged delay, the public expenditure it consumed and the massive cost escalation that ultimately accompanied the projects.

“Projects worth Rs 9,802 crore remained stuck in Delhi since 2017 and have now been returned and rejected. Public money was consumed, valuable years were lost and the cost of the projects had already mounted with every passing year of bureaucratic delay,” Sapru said.

Revisiting the long and circuitous history of the projects, Sapru said the original 2017 heavy metro proposal envisaged a 58-km network at an estimated cost of Rs 15,881 crore but was subsequently rejected by the Centre. Fresh Detailed Project Reports were thereafter prepared by RITES Ltd, Gurgaon, in 2023 under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs’ Metrolite Guidelines of 2019.

The proposed Srinagar corridor, he said, stretched 25 km from HMT to Indira Nagar with 24 stations at an estimated cost of Rs 5,733 crore, up from Rs 4,892 crore in 2021. The Jammu corridor covered 23 km from Bantalab to Bari Brahmana through 22 stations at an estimated cost of Rs 4,069 crore.

Yet despite the preparation of fresh DPRs, Sapru said both proposals remained pending with the Ministry from 2023 and were eventually sent back without receiving final approval, leaving behind neither an executable project nor a definite implementation timeline.

Turning his criticism towards the J&K administration, Sapru said the project had been repeatedly advanced without fulfilling several mandatory requirements prescribed under the Metrolite policy.

“No Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority was formed, no land was identified and no Comprehensive Mobility Plan was approved, yet the demand for 100 per cent Central funding against the 50:50 norm continued,” he said.

Sapru added that no dedicated execution agency such as the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation had been formally engaged, further weakening the institutional framework required to take the project from proposal to implementation.

The Congress leader said the cost of administrative inaction had been particularly visible in Srinagar, where the estimated project cost had risen by around Rs 840 crore in just two years.Click Here To Follow Our WhatsApp Channel

He recalled that between 2016 and 2021, the Housing Department and RITES had undertaken visits to metro systems in Delhi, Kochi and Lucknow, while experts from the Japan International Cooperation Agency had also visited Jammu and Srinagar to assess a proposal that had been conceived for Japanese funding.

Based on publicly available information, Sapru said around Rs 8.50 crore had been spent on DPR preparation alone, apart from expenditure incurred on TA/DA and official exposure visits.

“Kochi made its metro operational in less than five years. Some may offer excuses in the name of disturbances, but the real question is why the officers and departments responsible failed to fulfil the MoHUA conditions despite having nearly a decade at their disposal,” Sapru said.

He said accountability needed to be traced through three distinct levels.

The first, he said, comprised the political heads who presided over the administration between 2016 and 2026, including the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Chief Minister and Housing and Urban Development Minister.

The second comprised the Commissioner Secretaries of the Housing and Urban Development Department who, Sapru alleged, continued forwarding DPRs to New Delhi without completing fundamental prerequisites such as land identification, formation of the UMTA and approval of a Comprehensive Mobility Plan.

The third level, he said, comprised the Chief Secretaries who chaired successive review meetings but failed to impose firm timelines or establish consequences for continued non-compliance.

Sapru said the rejection of the proposals represented more than the loss of a single infrastructure project. According to him, it represented the loss of years, the consumption of public resources and the surrender of a major opportunity to build a modern mass-transit system for Jammu and Srinagar.

He also referred to the political promise surrounding the project, saying the “Dream Project of Modi ji”, which he said had been promised ahead of the 2024 elections, had ultimately been left “stranded at the station”.

“The people of Jammu and Kashmir have already paid the price in lost time, public expenditure and cost escalation. The Government and the bureaucracy must now answer for the delay, the money spent, the escalation suffered and the eventual rejection of the projects,” Sapru said. (KNS)