Moving ahead with the much-awaited laying of the metro rail corridor in the densely populated locales of Hyderabad's old city, the Hyderabad Metro Rail Limited on Sunday started a drone survey of the proposed rail alignment of the corridor between Mahatma Gandhi Bus Station at Imlibun to Falaknuma, 5.5 km away. The works on this corridor were initiated in July this year on instructions of Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, following which the HMRL had identified about 1000 properties en route for acquisition, besides 103 religious or sensitive structures that need to be avoided. HMRL managing director N V S Reddy said the drone survey has been taken up in addition to the conventional survey to take “exact measurements of the affected properties which are required for road widening in the narrow stretch between Darul-Shifa junction and Shalibanda junction and for construction of metro stations.” Explaining further the challenge of protection of 103 religious and sensitive structures, including 21 mosques, 12 temples, 12 ashoor khanas, 33 dargahs, 7 graveyards, and 6 chillahs, Reddy said drone survey will be helpful in evolving appropriate engineering solutions to save these structures. He added that the location of pillars, stations and metro viaducts is being planned to avoid any adverse effect on these religious and sensitive structures. Phase-1 of HMRL which included the 5.5 km stretch in the old city was not taken up despite the rest of the 67 km being completed and operationalised a few years ago. The corridor from Jubilee Bus Station in Secunderabad was initially planned till Falaknuma but was stopped at MG Bus Station. Several reasons including the presence of religious and heritage structures and the need for property acquisition to demand a change in route alignment were among the reasons often cited for the delay. Reddy said that drone survey enables quick collection of real-time data, high-resolution imagination, 3D modelling, seamless integration of GIS (Geographic Information System) data and CAD software, data analysis and visualization. According to him, tenders are also being finalised simultaneously for taking up the investigation of ground capacity in the coming days. Such investigations will start from Falaknuma where the last metro station is being proposed. Besides MGBS metro station which is operational, the stretch is proposed to have four more stations, namely, Salarjung Museum, Charminar (metro stations will be about 500 metres away from these two monuments), Shalibanda and Falaknuma. About 6 lakh passengers use the HMRL on a daily basis at present but however, the ridership is the lowest on the JBS-MGBS corridor and the completion of the proposed works till Falaknuma is expected to boost the numbers as it would connect the old city to the rest of Hyderabad.
