Lucknow, Sep 16 (IANS) The Uttar Pradesh government has decided to run metro rail in Meerut, Kanpur, Allahabad and Varanasi, after pushing for a similar project in Lucknow, an official said Tuesday.

Chief Secretary Alok Ranjan has asked officials to prepare a detailed project report for the same.

The development came after officials Monday met the chief secretary and discussed the possibility of running metro rail in these cities. A techno-feasibility of running metro in these cities has already been done and now efforts are on to take it further, the official told IANS.

While the temple city of Varanasi, represented in the Lok Sabha by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is high on priority, the state government is keen to push for the metro rail project in Ghaziabad, neighbouring the union capital New Delhi.

The state government has set a timeline of June 2016 for the beginning of the Delhi-Dilshad Garden-Ghaziabad route of metro rail.

Noida in Uttar Pradesh is already connected to New Delhi with the metro. The government is also mulling the possibility of extending the facility to Greater Noida which houses a large number of industries and schools other than residential areas.