New
Delhi: The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Limited (DMRC),
has received a spate of requests from State governments
within the country, as well as some foreign countries,
for providing consultancy for setting up Metro systems
in their capital cities. Speaking in the Lok Sabha, Union
minister of state for urban development, Ajay Maken, said
that Sri Lanka and Syria had approached the corporation
for feasibility and detailed project reports for Metro
systems for their respective capitals, Colombo and Damascus.
Within
the country, various State governments are exploring the
viability for such a system and have also approached the
DMRC for feasibility and project reports as well. The
cities, for which State governments have evinced interest,
are Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad,
Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, Chennai, NOIDA, Gurgaon, Faridabad
and Pune.
According
to Maken, the DMRC is undertaking the consultancy on the
basis of the experience and expertise gained while executing
the Delhi Metro Project. He also mentioned that DMRC would
not undertake the consultancy on a purely commercial basis
and that the consultancy charges, as proposed, would be
quite meager as compared to other international consultants.
The
minister also stated that the net revenue generated from
consultancy by DMRC Ltd., after meeting all expenditures,
for the year 2005-06 was Rs.4.68 crore, as compared to
Rs2.18 crore for 2004-05.
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