Vizag Metro Rail’s land acquisition pro likely from April

The ambitious Visakhapatnam Metro Rail (VMR) project has reached a key milestone. If everything goes according to the timelines set by the stakeholder departments, land acquisition for this mega project is likely to begin in April 2026.

As part of the progress, officials held ‘public consultation’ meetings at Asilmetta and NAD Junction here on Tuesday (February 10, 2026) to interact with the people whose houses or businesses will be affected by the metro rail routes.

The meetings are a necessary step before the government can acquire any land from private individuals for the much-hyped project, which has been on paper for the past 14 years.

So far, five such meetings have been held across the city since mid-2025 to talk to people living along the proposed three metro corridors spanning over 46 km.

A special team called RISES (Research and Infrastructure Survey and Engineering Services) conducted public consultation meetings on Tuesday and collected feedback from 88 project-affected people from Corridor-1 and Corridor-2, out of a total of 286 people across the three corridors who will be directly affected by the project.

After completing these meetings, RISES will prepare a Social Impact Assessment (SIA) report and submit it to the Visakhapatnam Collector.

The project team said that their main goal is to use as little private land as possible. Currently, the plan requires a total of 99.2 acres of land, but most of it already belongs to the government.

Speaking to The Hindu, RISES Director A. Madhav Reddy said, “Our SIA work is almost complete. We will be able to submit this SIA report to the Visakhapatnam Collector by the end of this February. SIA is a mandatory stage as per the Land Acquisition Act, 2013, for any major projects. As per our preliminary assessments based on our meetings, more than 70 per cent of the attendees are in support of the project and we have to compile all the opinions and data from our meetings. Our sole aim is to reduce the need for private land.”

After receiving the SIA report from RISES, the Visakhapatnam Collector will send it for ‘Expert review’. A special committee (expert committee) comprising a scientist, a social expert, and two affected residents will check the SIA report. After getting approval from this expert committee, the report will go to the State government. If everything looks good, the government will officially announce the start of land acquisition.

Speaking to The Hindu from the State secretariat in Vijayawada, an official of the Land Acquisition and R&R Department said, “For Visakhapatnam Metro Rail, the land acquisition process has not yet begun. The State government is waiting for a formal request letter from the Visakhapatnam district administration for land acquisition. If the timeline continues, we will go for an official notification for land acquisition, possibly from the new financial year, April 2026.”