Visakhapatnam: With chief minister Chandrababu Naidu making it clear that his government's immediate focus would be on the construction of Amaravati including putting in place at the earliest a metro rail system in the capital region, the much-hyped Vizag Metro Rail (VMR) project will remain in the backburner until then, sources said.The state government had approved the detailed project report (DPR) for the construction of 42.5-km metro railway track in the city at a cost of Rs 13,000 crore in December 2015. Subsequently, it forwarded the report to the Union ministry of urban development for approval. The concerned authorities have hoped that all formalities would be completed by the end of 2015-16 fiscal and that the works would begin in the present fiscal.However, when TOI enquired after the progress of the project on Thursday, official sources maintained that the file related to the VMR was still gathering dust at the concerned ministry's desk. The present status of the project indicates that the government is not interested on the project this financial year and moreover it is picking out several loopholes in the project, especially regarding passenger traffic.A top official from the civic department said the state government is currently keen on the 25-km long metro rail project at Amaravathi-Vijayawada. The TDP government is planning to invite tenders for the works in a couple of months, but has no such plans for the metro project in Vizag. "Chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu did not discuss the metro project in the recent meeting with the local authorities including collector and GVMC commissioner," the official said.Apart from the CM's focus on Amaravati, the sources attributed the delay to various other reasons as well. They include the question of financial viability for maintenance of the metro railway as the government feels that the revenue generated from passenger traffic may not be enough to pay for the maintenance. As per the criteria, the PHPDT (peak hour per direction traffic) value should be at least 20,000 passengers for at least a 5-km of continuous stretch by the time the project is completed in 2021. However, the DPR projected that VMR will have a maximum of 10,000-11,000 PHPDT value only on the main corridor of the total three corridors (Kommadi Junction to Gajuwaka on the national highway).That the state was not keen on the Vizag metro rail project was made clear by municipal administration principal secretary R Karikal Valaven who refrained from talking on the subject in the recent board meeting of the Visakhapatnam Urban Development Authority held this week.