Accordingly it is the irony of the times we are living in that the Corridor-2 of the hyderabad Metro rail (HMR) that pierces through the historic Badi Chawdi and sultan Bazaar was inaugurated by telangana chief minister K Chadrasekhar Rao. Meanwhile when leading the movement for a separate state, kcr addressed a public meeting in sultan Bazaar on june 17, 2011 and warned the then ‘Andhra’ leadership of bloodshed if it dares to touch these heritage markets.
Furthermore traders of Badi Chowdi, sultan Bazaar, Kothi and Putlibowli, under a joint action committee (JAC) displayed fierce resistance to the metro going through their busy markets. From the last week of january 2011, they protested several times by shutting down shops, holding candle-light processions, vanta-varpu (cooking in public), and organising cultural activities etc. Perhaps the resistance was so strong that the HMR and L&T were not even allowed to conduct soil tests in these markets for five years.
Moreover after spending about Rs 21,000 crore (at the rate of Rs 300 crore per km), the metro’s ability to carry only about 4 lakh people or so a day should not be questioned. The fact that the metro promised to carry 15 lakh passengers in 2014, which should be about 19.7 lakh per day now, gets conveniently buried in the cleverness of its marketing. As the metro chugs through the narrow Bazaar, and as the metro pillars occupy much of the narrow street like ugly warts on a pleasant face, the Jain Mandir remains a mute witness to the many protests including that of KCR’s ‘roar’ at the same spot. Apparently it faces the prospect of slow crumbling down on its own due to the impact of vibrations of the metro as the gap between it and the metro viaduct is too narrow hardly a feet or so.
