Mumbai: In the wake of widespread protests to save Aarey Colony from the Metro 3 car shed, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) will be shifting the site for the Metro 6 car shed from the recently-proposed Aarey to Wadala.
Officials said that the MMRDA would opt for a 28,000 square metre plot at Wadala for the car shed — catering to the 14.47 km long metro 6 (Lokhandwala-Kanjurm-arg) corridor.
A MMRDA official said, “We will not be seeking land at Aarey Colony. We have decided to take up 28,000 square feet of land in the Wadala area to build the casting yard for the metro 6.”
According to reports, MMRDA last week sought 2,775 square metre land at Aarey for setting up of the car shed for metro 6.
The move, however, attracted sharp criticism from citizens and envionmentalists, who had already been protesting over MMRDA’s choice of Aarey for the Metro 3 car shed.
Activists pointed out that 33 hectares of green space were already being sacrificed for the Metro 3 car shed. Another 20,387 square metre would be gone for the Metro Bhavan.
Earlier, environmentalist Stalin Dayanand alleged that the state government had deliberately cleared the decks for construction of the car shed at Aarey by removing the “No Development Zone” tag of the 33 hectare plot in the eco-sensitive zone.
However, BMC chief Praveen Pardeshi on Monday backed the move to remove over 2,700 trees at Aarey for the metro 3 car shed.
“Mumbai has the least space to develop at the moment. All of Mumbai lives in just 29.99 per cent of the area. Whatever is happening to the Metro today is your collective pressure,” he said.
Nevertheless, Mr Dayanand went on to highlight a similar action.
“Earlier, the River Regulation Policy prohibited any construction within one kilometre of a river. However, the Devendra Fadnavis-led state government scrapped that policy too in 2015 to make way for the car shed in the vicinity of the Mithi river’s floodplain,” he claimed.
