Metro Railway completes erection of 2,599 pillars

Hyderabad (NSS): Construction of Metro Rail pillars, which started in April 2012, got completed with the erection of the last pillar (2599th pier) near MGBS Metro station a couple of days ago, HMRL MD NVS Reddy has said.

He said Bhoomi Puja for the first pillar (Pier No.19 near Genpact in Uppal) was done on April 19, 2012 and due to the turmoil prevalent at that time, no political dignitary was present and only some senior officers like then Chief Secretary Pankaj Dwivedi and HMRL MD NVS Reddy and L&TMRHL officials participated in it.

The MD said that except the 6km stretch in the Old City, all the pillars for the 66km phase-I Metro project have been completed and that a new world record has been created by construction of so many Metro pillars by a single company L&T in this manner.

The pace of construction is also very significant and on an average one Metro pillar was constructed per day. Of the 2,599 pillars, while 1,569 are normal, 224 cantilever pillars, 602 station pillars, 51 hammer head pillars and 153 are portal pillars, he stated.

Describing the construction of such a large number of pillars by barricading 30feet in the middle of the congested roads of Hyderabad as an engineering and logistics challenge, NVS Reddy said they overcame major hurdles and created milestones in the mammoth construction activity.

Stating that a large number of eminent engineers and officers struggled hard over the last seven years to cross all the hurdles, NVS Reddy specifically complimented L&TMRHL engineers MP Naidu, Shanker Lingam, K.M. Rao and HMRL senior engineers and officers Mohd Ziauddin, M. Vishnu Vardhan Reddy, BN Rajeswar and A Balakrishna for constructing Hyderabad Metro with least inconvenience to the public. (NSS)