Union Home Minister Amit Shah dedicates Chennai's 5th reservoir, lays stone for Chennai Metro Phase-II

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, 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, 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.