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The Coimbatore City Municipal Corporation on Friday passed a resolution criticizing the Union government for rejecting the Coimbatore Metro Rail Project. The resolution stated that the metro is important for the city's growth and would greatly benefit residents by improving transport and reducing traffic.
Coimbatore's Metro Plans Rejected
During the council meeting at Victoria Hall, a total of 88 resolutions were approved. These included plans for cleaning and restoring unused public wells, buying dengue fogging chemicals, issuing municipal bonds, and starting work on new buildings for Urban Primary Health Centres (UPHCs). After these resolutions were passed, councillors from the DMK and its alliance parties requested Mayor R. Ranganayaki to include an additional resolution condemning the Centre's rejection of the metro project. The mayor accepted, and the resolution was passed immediately. It highlighted that the metro is essential for strengthening public transport in Coimbatore.
However, this led to political disagreements. AIADMK councillors accused the DMK government of intentionally preparing a faulty Detailed Project Report (DPR), which they said caused the Union government to reject the proposal. This sparked arguments, with both parties blaming each other. DMK councillors said their government had allocated more than ₹6,000 crore for the metro in the 2021 and 2023 budgets. They also claimed that the AIADMK government had not even started preparing the DPR during its rule.
As tensions rose, three AIADMK councillors walked out of the meeting and held a sit-in protest outside the hall. AIADMK councillor R. Prabhakaran from ward 47 said that during the AIADMK government, former chief minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami had signed an agreement with a Japanese company for the project and allocated ₹3 crore for the first phase. He accused the DMK of blocking the funds after coming to power and said the Centre rejected the DPR because the current government submitted it with errors.
