Chennai, Nov 21 (UNI) Senior BJP Leader and Union
Home Minister on Saturday dedicated the newly built
Chennai's fifth reservoir and laid the foundation stone
for the second phase of Chennai Metro Rail project.
Mr Shah, who arrived from Delhi at 1340 hrs, drove to
a star hotel for rest.
From there, he came to the function venue, Kalaivanar
Arangam where he laid the foundation stone for a slew
of infrastructure projects involving a total outlay of
Rs 67,378 crore in the presence of Tamil Nadu Chief
Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami, Deputy Chief Minister
O Panneerselvam, Ministers and officials.
Security arrangements have been tightened in view of
Mr Shah's visit with the deployment of more than 3,000
police personnel on bandobust duty.
During the 90-minute event, Mr Amit Shah dedicated the
Rs 380 crore Thervoy Kandigai reservoir in neighbouring
Tiruvallur district and laid the foundation stone for the
Phase-II of Chennai Metro Rail at an estimated cost of
Rs 61,843 crore.
The new reservoir was expected to further augment the
drinking water requirements of this teeming megapolis,
besides meeting the additional needs.
The reservoir, formed by combining two lakes, Thervoy
Kandigai and Kannankottai, was spread across 1,495
acres and would be the fifth reservoir for the city, adding
to the existing four main reservoirs--Poondi, Sholavaram,
RedHills and Chembarambakkam--which together have
a total storage capacity of 11,257 mcft.
The new reservoir would facilitate supply of 65 million
litres a day (MLD) water to the city and the project
would raise the combined water storage in the lakes
by 1,000 mcft.
Besides the Phase II of Chennai Metro Rail project,
which was expected to make a transformational change
in the city's transport system, Mr Shah also laid the
foundation stones for the Coimbatore-Avinashi
elevated highway project (Rs 1,620 crore), barrage
across river Cauvery at Nanjai Pugalur in Karur
district (Rs 406 crore), expansion of the Chennai
Trade Centre (Rs 309 crore), Indian Oil Corporation's
POL terminal at Vallur (Rs 900 crore), Lube Plant at
Amullaivoyal (Rs 1400 crore) and a new Jetty at
Kamarajar Port (Rs 900 crore) via video conferencing.
The phase II Metro project will cover 118.9 km
with three corridors, Madhavaram to SIPCOT,
Madhavaram to Sholinganallur and Light House
to Poonamallee as CMRLwas awaiting funding
from the Centre for the project.
For the Rs 60,000-crore project, CMRL will get
financial assistance from the State government
and various international funding agencies like
the Japan International Cooperation Agency, the
Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and others.
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