Three major city projects — the Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP) III, Panvel-Diva-Vasai corridor and the CST-Panvel elevated corridor — are set to get sanctioned in November, December and January respectively.
Railway officials claimed that the required sanctions would arrive before the budget in February. But though these projects were announced almost two years ago, the money required for the same will only be released now.
Union railway minister Suresh Prabhu had said Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be laying the foundation stone for these projects in October or November.
An official said on the condition of anonymity, “The CST-Panvel corridor is a popular project for Mumbai and the MUTP III is extremely important in terms of capacity augmentation.”
The MUTP III project, with a total cost of Rs 35,000 crore, is important in terms of decongesting the railway network. It includes projects such as the Airoli-Kalwa link, the Harbour Line’s extension from Andheri to Goregaon to Borivali, quadrupling of the Virar-Dahanu connection, and capacity enhancement purchase of 285 coaches and the 5th and 6th lines between Borivali and Virar.
The Panvel-Diva-Vasai corridor will be built at a cost of Rs 10,000 crore, while the CST-Panvel elevated corridor is now estimated at Rs 8,000 crore, with new alignment like the double-deck corridor and the current Harbour Line being shifted from Dockyard Road station via Carnac Bunder to Orange gate via Palm Beach Road between Vashi and Belapur. The official added, “The timing of these sanctions is very political. We could have started on the initial procedures by at least mid-year, but it was pushed to until a month before the budget in February.”
Free Up Corridors: World Bank The World Bank (WB) has asked city officials to introduce projects and take steps to decongest the current saturated corridors between CST-Kalyan and Churchgate-Virar instead of relying on completely new corridors like the Panvel-Diva-Vasai corridor and Kalyan-Airoli link. The Indian Railways will be taking a loan from the WB for all these projects and the WB forwarded its views when the latest talks about the financial feasibility of these projects were discussed.
