HYDERABAD: With the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) going bankrupt, the work on the prestigious PV Narasimha Rao Elevated Expressway is likely to stop, at least for the time being.
Project contractor Simplex Somdatta is learnt to have told the HMDA authorities that the work would have to be suspended and the staff demobilised from the site if the dues amounting to about Rs 70 crore are not cleared in another few weeks.
The 11.46-km-long elevated expressway from Mehdipatnam to Aramgarh Junction on NH-7 is designed to be the longest flyover in the country and provide connectivity to the international airport at Shamshabad. Recently, the contractor met HMDA Metropolitan Commissioner KS Jawahar Reddy and represented to him about the dues not cleared since January this year. Based on the phase-wise completion of works, HMDA has to release Rs 25 crore a month but has failed to so for three months.
Jawahar Reddy, however, asked the contractor to continue the work and assured that the dues would be cleared shortly. He said the HMDA had approached some nationalised banks for a loan of Rs 100 crore by offering to mortgage hundred acres of prime lands located in Jawahar Nagar and some other places belonging to it.
HMDA officials told Express that the contractor, citing lack of funds, urged the metropolitan commissioner to clear the dues first to enable them to complete the work as per the time schedule.
Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy, who had inspected the expressway work a few months ago, announced that it would be opened to traffic at all costs on August 15 this year and directed the HMDA officials to make serious efforts to complete the project before the deadline.
According to HMDA officials, Rs 300 crore out of the total estimated cost of Rs 439 crore has been spent on the project so far. Nearly 70 percent of the work has been completed. The remaining work pertains to 792 segments, 105 spans, 56 piers and 14 concrete foundations.
The sluggish and lukewarm responses to the sale of plots last month drove the HMDA into a financial crisis. Out of the 256 Residential, Group Housing, Commercial and Amenities Plots in different locations on the city outskirts through e-Tendering and sealed tenders, only 14 could be sold with great difficulty and just about Rs 8 crore could be raised from the auction. The response was poor because global recession and the coming elections.
The authorities had expected that the auction would fetch more than Rs 200 crore.