Irked by the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority’s (MMRDA’s) indecisiveness on how to proceed with building the Mumbai Metro’s second line, the Maharashtra government has set a deadline for the civic infrastructure body.
The MMRDA, the nodal agency for the Mumbai Metro project, will now have to issue the work order for the Charkop-Bandra-Kankhurd line by the first week of December and get the work started by January 1.
Not happy with the delays, first on account of the change in the alignment of the line and then due to the debate within the MMRDA over the model to be adopted for executing the project, Chief Secretary Johnny Joseph recently called a meeting of senior MMRDA officials and told them that the authority should should declare the winner of the bidding process by the end of October, said a senior official of the state government’s urban development department.
The Democratic Front government in the state wants to see concrete progress on the project as it faces elections in the later part of 2009, said the official.
Anil Ambani-led Reliance Energy, which has bagged the contract for the phase-I of the Metro, has joined hands with Canadian firm SNC Lavalin for the second stretch. The Mukesh Ambani-controlled Reliance Industries (RIL) is bidding with Siemens and Gammon. There are other seven consortia in the race, including GE India-L&T-CA-IDPL, Tata Power-Mitsubishi-Tata Realty’s Pioneer Infrastructure, GVK-Bombardier-YTL, IL&FS-Soma Constructions-Punj Lloyd, and Essar-Alstom.
The 31.8-km Charkop-Bandra-Mankhurd is the single longest corridor of the Mumbai Metro project. While the total cost of the three-phase project is pegged at around Rs 22,000 crore, the cost of the second line alone is estimated at around Rs 12,000 crore.
Originally, the second line was to come up between Colaba-Bandra-Charkop. However, the authority realised that it was not possible to build an elevated corridor anywhere in the island city (between Colaba and Mahim)and dropped the plan as going underground would have meant a huge rise in costs. The change of alignment from Colba-Bandra-Charkop to Charkop-Bandra-Mankhurd delayed the project by at least an year or so.
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The project was further delayed when the MMRDA decided to follow the Delhi Metro Railway Corporation (DMRC) model for the remaining two lines in the first phase of the project instead of the private-public partnership (PPP) route it adopted in the case of the first line between Varsova-Andheri-Ghatokpar.
The rationale offered was that the viability gap funding (VGF) to the tune of Rs. 4,500 crore for the first phase was not possible with the central government capping the VGF at 20 per cent. In fact, the MMRDA even floated the Mumbai Metro Railway Corporation (MMRC) on the lines of the DMRC.
Realising that the central government was not willing to be an equal partner, as it was in the Delhi Metro project, the agency decided in July this year to go back to the PPP model.
All this delayed the project by at least five years. According to the master plan for the Mumbai Metro project, the second line was supposed to be operational by 2011. However, the MMRDA is now setting up a deadline of 2011 for making at least one section of the second line operational.