MMRDA gets special tag to speed up 5 Mumbai Metro lines

To speed up five upcoming Metro projects, the state government has granted the special planning authority (SPA)status to the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), planning agency and nodal authority for implementing Metro projects.

It accorded the status to MMRDA by issuing a notification on June 30 under section 40 of the Maharashtra Regional Town Planning Act, 1966.

This means that MMRDA will get possession of land parcels spread over 73 hectares in the city and Thane, and have the right over the alignment of five Metro corridors — DN Nagar-Mandale (Metro 2B), Wadala-Ghatkopar-Thane-Kasarvadavli (Metro 4), Thane-Bhiwandi-Kalyan (Metro 5), Swami Samarth Nagar-Jogeshwari-Vikroli (Metro 6) and Dahisar East-Mira Bhayander-Andheri East (Metro 9). The land parcels in the city and Thane, belonging to civic bodies and other agencies, will be used to build accompanying infrastructure for the Metro projects such as casting yards, depots without any interference or seeking permission from the BMC and others bodies. It will give MMRDA the right to develop the Metro stations commercially by constructing office and retail complexes.

The land parcels given to MMRDA are at Goregaon, Dindoshi, Malvani (for office space), Mandale, Turbhe, Mulund (East) and Thane (for casting yard and metro depot).

According to the notification, the decision was taken after the MMRDA commissioner wrote to the state government three times — December 28, 2017, May 4, 2018 and May 22, 2018.

“As per the plan, the Metro network is going to be spread across 276 km. Majority of our time is taken up in getting clearances from within the government for transfer of ownership of land. This SPA status gives us a degree of autonomy. Also, we will have to commercially build these Metro stations to make the project financially viable,” said a senior MMRDA official.

Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, who heads MMRDA, had earlier granted a similar status to MMRDA for two Metro corridors — Dahisar to DN Nagar (Metro 2A) and Andheri East to Dahisar East (Metro 7). The SPA status has also been granted to Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (Mhada) to develop 114 of its layouts on its own. The Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT) has also been tagged as SPA, to develop the eastern waterfront, international cruise terminal, etc.

BMC had opposed this move of granting SPA to different authorities and urged the state to form a single authority for the city. But the CM believes that the SPA status speeds up the ongoing projects.