The Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) has asked the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) Board to act on officials and various contractors who have been held responsible for problems in the track of the Airport Metro line.
The enquiry committee was set up to fix accountability for the problems in the Airport Metro line track in the middle of last year. The Rs 5,700-crore Airport Metro line, implemented as the first public-private partnership project in the sector, was shut for six months after defects were found in ‘bearings’ in the civil structure.
Building the viaduct and tracks was DMRC’s responsibility. The concessionaire cited these structure problems while unilaterally exiting from the project, though DMRC said it had fixed the problems within the requisite time.
The metro board has said that it had to spend Rs 14.03 crore on repairing the bearings of the line to make it functional yet again, according to data shared in Parliament.
BOARD ACCOUNTABILITY
The committee has disagreed on whether two members of the DMRC Board should be held responsible for the fiasco. They are Mangu Singh, the current DMRC Managing Director, who was the Director (Works) while the track was under construction, and R.N. Joshi, the then Director (Finance), DMRC.
“One member of the committee submitted a supplementary note fixing responsibility on Mangu Singh….and R.N. Joshi…However, the other member was of the view that there appears to be no reason for the top management to interfere in the day-to-day working and the responsibility attributed to the top management of DMRC in this regard is not justified,” the Urban Development Ministry said a reply in Lok Sabha.
The DMRC officials identified for failure of the system are Kumar Keshav, the then Director (Projects), OP Singh, Chief Project Manager; Deputy Chief Engineers Ravi Kapoor and JP Vashist; Sanjeev Mehta Deputy General Manager, Finance; Deepak Patiar, Assistant Manager, DMRC.
The committee has blamed all stakeholders for the fiasco. “The enquiry committee found failures on the part of various agencies — the concessionaire (Delhi Airport Metro Express Private Ltd, a special purpose vehicle promoted by Reliance Infra), the construction contractor (IJM-IJMI JV), Airport Line consultant (PCI-PBI-JARTS-Tonichi-RITES), the detailed design consultant (Systra) and Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC),” Urban Development Minister, Deepa Dasmunshi, stated in Lok Sabha here on Wednesday.