INDIA: India’s media has obtained a letter from Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) Managing Director Mangu Singh to the Urban Development Minister Kamal Nath, accusing Reliance Infra, the PPP partners in the Delhi Airport Metro Express Line (DAMEL) project, of allowing the situation to "worsen to such an extent that services were required to be suspended. Any professional operator would not have allowed the situation to come to that level."

The letter started a very public “blame game” between the two PPP partners after the DAME line has been suspended “indefinitely” due to safety concerns.

airrail NEWS reported that the rail service was stopped on 8th of July after just 16 months of carrying passengers between New Delhi Railway Station and the Airport.

A week after Reliance Infrastructure accused Delhi Metro of shoddy work on the high-speed line and shut it down, Delhi Metro Rail Corporation has hit back.

According to Times of India, the letter, sent as a 'fortnightly status report', is dated July 11, 2012. It claims that "the current situation has arisen due to the fact that there were defects in fixing of the bearings and the same was not detected by Reliance in time".



In the letter Singh has virtually accused Reliance of using the bearings issue as an excuse to bail out of the Airport Metro Express project. "As I have already brought to your kind notice, Reliance, even prior to this issue of damage to the bearings, had represented to DMRC about the financial viability of the project and had in fact written to DMRC in this respect. They had expressed that either DMRC take over or restructure the entire project so that the financial burden on them is reduced. Meanwhile, they were able to find this issue of bearings and suspended the services," he says.

Reliance Infrastructure was quick to respond to the accusations, saying the corporation was endangering the lives of commuters.

The accusation came in a second letter to urban development minister. In his letter, Sumit Banerjee, CEO of R-Infra, writes that "safety and operational economics cannot be bracketed together". Denying allegations that economic considerations had prompted the concessionaire to shut down services on the high speed Metro line, Banerjee accuses DMRC of playing with safety concerns.

"We have restrained ourselves so far from disclosing that DMRC had given us in writing that the Metro corridor (with severe civil structure defects) was safe to continue to run trains, and it is actually DMRC who tried to force us to take undue risks to life and property," says the letter.

"Contractually, there is not an iota of doubt that DMRC (and more specifically the director-works) is accountable to us (the concessionaire) and more significantly to DMRC's stakeholders and the citizens of Delhi, for this shoddy quality of execution," he says.

The Urban Development Ministry said on Monday it has constituted a two-member panel to investigate the matter.

“Repair work by DMRC has to be done as soon as possible and the cost will be met by those who are liable under the contractual agreement,” Sudhir Krishna, Secretary, Ministry of Urban Development, said at a press conference on Monday. The panel comprises A.K. Gupta, additional member (works), Indian Railways, and D. Diptivilasa, additional secretary in the Ministry.

The Minister also disclosed on Monday that several clips in the underground section of the line had been severely damaged and it would take at least five months to rectify the problem, meaning that the line most likely will not be re-open in August, as predicted earlier.

The Urban Development Ministry said the joint inspection team of the Railways, Delhi Metro and Reliance Infra submitted its report on Monday.

Krishna said: “The report says 540 of the 2,100 bearings have been inspected. Most were found to be affected. Major defects were detected in several of them. Design consultant SYSTRA will study each bearing and suggest measures.”

The Delhi Airport Metro Express Line is the first PPP project in India and had a difficult ride from the beginning. The project had missed four deadlines before opening on 23 February 2011. 

But what all this means to the Indira Gandhi International Airport passengers, 15,000 of which were travelling to and from the city every day?

“You have made our life miserable...” comments one disgruntled passenger.

One passenger raised a good point that the announcement of the line suspension was made just a day before the actual closure:

“You have just screwed the daily travellers. I have been travelling since day one and now when we are pretty comfortable, you shut down the line. At least you should have given us a week or a month before the closure.”

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