PM Modi allows setting up panel to lay down standards for metro rail systems

The government has set up a committee under former Delhi Metro chief E Sreedharan to lay down standardisation norms for components with an aim to cut costs in the construction and operation of metro rail systems in the country and bring them under the Make in India umbrella, senior officials of the Union housing and urban affairs ministry said on Sunday. Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar and Union urban affairs minister Hardeep Puri in the cockpit of a metro train after the inauguration of the Mundka-Bahadurgarh section of the Delhi Metro's Green Line by Prime Minister Narendra Modi via videoconference, in Bahadurgarh. “Besides recommending standardisation norms for various components, the Sreedharan committee will also suggest ways to indigenise metro components that are currently imported. The policy said the government and metro rail implementing agencies should take adequate steps to progressively indigenise systems by incentivising local development and manufacture of components being imported.