Opposition Leader V S Achuthanandan has charged that the government and the Kochi Metro Rail Company Ltd (KMRL) were playing a hide-and-seek game on the question of entrusting the execution contract of the Kochi metro project with the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation.
“It was widely believed that a final decision on awarding the contract to the DMRC for executing the Kochi Metro project will be taken by the KMRL Board, which met on Tuesday,as the Prime Minister was poised to lay the foundation-stone for the venture on Thursday. But nothing happened,” Achuthanandan said in a statement on Wednesday.
He said there was wide criticism that a few in the government and also a section of the official lobby in the state and the Centre were pulling strings to avoid DMRC and E Sreedharan,who had conducted feasibility studies and toiled hard for years to get permission for the Kochi Metro project, conceived on the lines of the Delhi Metro.