Patna: The Bailey Road cave-in on Sunday is set to delay finalisation of the detailed project report for the Patna Metro.

The urban development and housing department, which is the nodal department of the project, will ask experts from Rail India Technical and Economic Service (RITES) to take a re-look at the DPR in the wake of the directive given by chief minister Nitish Kumar that experts should look into the details of the Lohia Path Chakra project and also the Patna Metro project.

The department had roped in the services of RITES for formulating the DPR of the Metro project.

"We will ask the experts from RITES to come over to Patna and take a look at the ground realities once again and if required do necessary changes in the Metro DPR," an urban development official, who is closely associated with the Metro project, told The Telegraph and added that the DPR had been prepared after doing the necessary studies yet details would be studied once again for being doubly sure about the safety aspect.

According to the DPR prepared by RITES, the Metro project had a total length of about 31.5km having two main corridors - East-West and North-South. While the East-West corridor talks of connecting Saguna Mor in the west with Patna Junction via Bailey Road, the north-south corridor would provide connectivity between Karmalichak in southeast Patna, where the new inter-state bus terminal would come up, with Patna Junction via Rajendra Nagar terminal, Ashok Rajpath and Gandhi Maidan.

According to the current DPR, the project entails a cost of Rs 19,000 crore out of which the Centre and the state will provide 20 per cent of the cost each and the remaining fund has to be mobilized as loans from other agencies. Also, it says that the project will take five years for completion from the day of its commissioning.

Also in this DPR, a part of the East-West corridor was coming in the way of the underpasses of the Lohia Path Chakra project.

As the caved-in portion of Bailey Road is located just adjacent to Lohia Path Chakra project, the government has become concerned about the safety and technical aspects of the project.

The urban development official said the experts from Bihar Rajya Pul Nirman Nigam, which is implementing the Lohia Path Chakra project, too, would study the details and once they reach a conclusion, a joint meeting of RITES officials and those of the nigam would be organised before finalising the Metro DPR.

On the likely time that would be taken in completing these formalities, the official said anything between 15 days and a month was likely to be taken in conducting the study and finalising the DPR in the light of the findings.

"Once the DPR is finalised, it would be sent for the approval of the state cabinet before being submitted to the Centre for a final approval," he added.

Earlier the department had planned to submit the DPR to the Centre by July-end.

The idea of having the Metro service in Patna was first conceived in 2011 and the project has gained some pace after formation of NDA government in Bihar a year back.