Poor planning led to failure of Mumbai's monorail: Mungantiwar

Due to lack of data the country stands to lose in global competition, says Sudhir Mungantiwar

Taking a dig at the previous Congress-NCP government in Maharashtra, finance minister Sudhir Mungantiwar on Friday attributed the failure of monorail project in the megapolis to "poor planning" and said there was "no accountability" to the money spent on it.

"The worst example of unplanned project is our monorail. Today we have only 4-5 passengers commuting on this Chembur-Wadala route daily. They (previous government) made merry by spending money on such an unplanned project as if there is no accountability for it," Mungantiwar said at an event organised by Tata Trust and WCCD.

"But now we don't want to have such an unplanned development in future. When we are working towards good governance it needs to be planned based on accurate data collected," he said.

Mungantiwar further said that apart from data collection, it's analysis is also crucial for implementation to ensure per capita satisfaction.

"Urban population is continuously growing and in that case, proper planning of cities is very important and data is the base. We still have Census data of 2011 and we are planning for 2030. But now we need to change this approach if we have to create sustainable infrastructure for the future generations," he said.

The Minister further said due to lack of data, the country stands to lose in global competition.