– Poor quality of equipment, construction being exposed
Nagpur :- You may be under the impression that Nagpur Metro is a world class project because some of its structures have been included in Guinness Book of World Records and Asia Book of Records. However, as the project gets older its poor quality of construction is getting exposed. Sources in Maha Metro said that the top authorities managed to prevent the media from learning about many incidents, which would have badly exposed them. Metro officials are more interested in preventing such incidents from appearing in local media than conducting an inquiry and punishing the guilty.
A metro train got stranded on Tuesday night near Chhatrapati Square metro station on Tuesday night. It had to be towed away by another train. Metro spokesperson claimed that this was a one-off incident. A metro spokesperson attributed it to a technical snag. However, a similar incident had happened on July 21 this year. At that time only one line of the metro was operational and trains plied in both directions on it for some time. It is reliably learnt that the insulator of Ujjwal Nagar metro station had burst, disrupting power supply to one line of Nagpur Metro. This type of incident had also happened in June. A power cable caught fire near Ajni Square metro station in May last year.
A highly placed source in Maha Metro said that the reason for frequent power failures was due to the fact that the quality of power equipment used by its contractors were of very poor quality. “Phase I of Nagpur Metro became fully operational in December 2022 and within some months, power equipment started failing. This is alarming. What will happen some years down the line,” said the official.
You may think that these are minor issues. Then consider this. Around 100 solar panels installed atop Vaishnodevi Square metro station were uprooted and came crashing during a light squall on June 7. It happened during early hours and fortunately nobody died or was injured. “The weight of a solar panel is 28 kilograms. If the incident had happened during the day, at least a dozen people would have died and several Maha Metro officials would have been behind bars,” said the source.
The less said about the quality of civil construction, the better. The roofs of Nagpur Metro’s ‘world class’ stations are of such poor quality that water regularly drips from them during the rainy season. Instead of repairing the roofs, Metro administration merely keeps buckets at the spot where water is dripping.
There are some defects that came to the knowledge of Metro officials and were rectified. However, it does raise a big question mark on the quality of construction.
In March this year the railway overbridge (ROB) over CONCOR siding in the MIHAN area developed cracks and showed soil settlement. Panicked Metro officials reduced the speed of trains over this ROB and rushed to VNIT to seek a solution. The problem was rectified only in September.
Same thing happened with the much publicized four-level traffic structure in Gaddigodam. It too had shown track settlement and developed cracks. Metro reduced the speed of trains over this ‘world class’ and ‘unique’ structure and rectified the defects within some weeks. Now things are back to normal.
Nagpur Metro’s car depot in MIHAN is another example of poor construction. The Commissioner of Metro Rail Safety (CMRS) had found several defects in it and pulled up the top officials. Rectification work was done as per CMRS directives.
If poor quality of construction was not enough, Metro officials’ lack of application of mind is evident when you go to Prajapati Nagar metro station. The gap between the door sill of the train and platform is double that of the permissible limit. Passengers, especially senior citizens and differently abled, have a lot of difficulty boarding trains from this station. CMRS had pulled up Maha Metro during his inspection of the station in April.
Lokmat Times had sent a detailed questionnaire to Maha Metro regarding these incidents but it did not send any response.
1- Door to poor quality of electrical equipment, power failures have become a regular occurrence and metro trains get stranded midway. Three such incidents have occurred since June
2- A power cable had caught fire last May
3- About 100 solar panels installed atop Vaishnodevi Square metro station came crashing during a light squall in June
4- Roofs of several metro stations leak during rainy season and buckets are placed on the floor to collect water
5- The ROB over CONCOR siding in MIHAN had developed defects in March and rectification had to be done
6- The four-layer traffic system in Gaddigodam developed defects and rectification had to be done
7- CMRS found several construction defects in MIHAN car depot
8- The gap between door sill of trains and platform in Prajapati Nagar metro station is very wide