Shinde holds infra meet to show Ajit who’s boss

Mumbai: A fortnight after his deputy Ajit Pawar held a meeting to review infrastructure projects in the state, and sought to justify this by saying he had the right to do so as finance minister, chief minister Eknath Shinde on Tuesday asserted his authority by holding a review of infrastructure projects with his two deputy CMs sitting right next to him.

In the ‘war room’ meeting, Shinde issued a host of directives to the administration on completing various ongoing projects and working out solutions to other issues. He also ordered the BMC to consider using the twin tunnel concept to solve Mumbai’s traffic congestion problem and to form a panel to decide possible locations for this. The war room, with secretaries from several departments as members, has been set up by Shinde to regularly monitor the progress of infrastructure projects in the state.

While deputy chief minister Fadnavis has always chosen to tread carefully by not encroaching on Shinde’s territory, as most infrastructure projects come under the urban development department headed by the CM, Ajit Pawar trod his own path. On August 11, he held his own ‘war room’-style meeting and discussed the progress of 34 projects, including seven metro lines, the Mumbai Trans-Harbour Link, the bullet train, redevelopment of BDD chawls, Dharavi redevelopment, Bandra Colony redevelopment and the Pune international airport. He also set up a ‘project management unit’ for this.

This did not go down well with Shinde as it was he, as chief minister, who was tracking the progress of these projects. It also exacerbated the power tussle between the two, as Pawar has been openly talking about staking his claim to the chief ministership. Even as speculation mounted on the cold war between them, Pawar on August 12 declared that he had the right to take a review of the infrastructure projects in his capacity as finance minister.

On Tuesday, Shinde reclaimed his right by convening a meeting of the war room, and reviewed the infra projects with Ajit sitting next to him. “The fact is that there is a cold war kind of situation between the two,” said a senior BJP leader. “Ajit has been trying to show that he is in charge while Shinde wants to demonstrate that the push to all the projects is coming from him.”

Reviewing various projects on Tuesday, Shinde emphasised Mumbai’s traffic congestion issues and said there was a need to install grade separators to solve this. “We should also consider the new concept of twin tunnels,” he said. “The BMC should conduct a survey to decide the locations at which we can construct such tunnels.” An officer from the CMO said that the twin tunnel model is like the tunnel on the Western Express Highway near the international airport.

Speaking to the media, Shinde said that the project of connecting the Western Expressway and Eastern Expressway was also discussed in the meeting. “I have given directions to speed up various infrastructure, metro and irrigation projects in the state,” he said. “All of them need to be started and finished in a time-bound manner. This will help citizens and aid in industrial expansion and development of the rural areas.” Shinde added that developing the special economic zones along the Samruddhi highway was important and they would speed that up as well.

The issue of land for the Mogharpada depot for Mumbai metro lines 4, 4A, and 11 was discussed as well as land acquisition at Kasheli for the Thane-Bhiwandi-Kalyan-to-Mumbai Metro 5 route. The CM asked BMC commissioner I S Chahal to speed up work on the Mithi river development and pollution control project. He also ordered him to remove encroachments on important roads and footpaths and keep roads and squares clean and beautiful in South Mumbai.