Naidu urges Gadkari to give speedy clearance to Vizag and Vijayawada metro rail projects 

Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu has requested Union Minister of Road Transport & Highways Nitin Gadkari to give speedy clearance to the Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada metro rail projects, while promising to do what all is required from the State for the smooth implementation of the highway projects.

The State government would ensure that land acquisition issues did not hamper the road projects that were crucial for development, Mr. Naidu told Mr. Gadkari, while thanking him for sanctioning eight road projects, including a greenfield highway between Hyderabad and Vijayawada, the total cost of which was about ₹27,000 crore.

Addressing a meeting where Mr. Gadkari virtually laid foundation for 27 road projects and inaugurated two projects on Saturday, Mr. Naidu said he was happy that the Union Minister agreed to recommend the sanction of an Outer Ring Road (ORR) around Amaravati.

He suggested that a bullet train linking Amaravati with Hyderabad, Chennai and Bengaluru would connect the huge population in those States.

Mr. Naidu said road projects costing more than ₹70,000 crore were in various stages of execution in Andhra Pradesh, and emphasis had been laid on the construction of sea and airports in order to provide the best logistics facilities.

Mr. Naidu said he was impressed by Mr. Gadkari’s dynamism in giving tangible shape to the highway projects that involved huge investments, and expressed confidence that under his leadership, the length of the national highways being built in a day would reach 50 km from the present 37 km.

The Chief Minister said that Mr. Gadkari had played a key role in the construction of the Polavaram project when he was the Union Minister for Water Resources.

Mr. Gadkari said in his speech earlier that Mr. Naidu’s vision to link the Godavari, the Krishna and the Penna was commendable, insisting that this project had the potential to take water from there to as far as the tail-end areas in Tamil Nadu.

Union Ministers K. Rammohan Naidu, Pemmasani Chandra Sekhar and Bhupathiraju Srinivasa Varma, Deputy Chief Minister K. Pawan Kalyan, Ministers B.C. Janardhan Reddy and Y. Satya Kumar, and MPs Lavu Sri Krishna Devarayalu, Kesineni Sivanath, Daggubati Purandeswari and Vallabhaneni Balashowry were among those present.