New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ambitious Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project is missing on its deadline of land acquisition as till date only 39 per cent of the 1,380 hectares of land required has been acquired. A senior National High Speed Rail Corporation Ltd. (NHSRCL) official requesting anonymity told IANS: "Till date, we have acquired about 39 per cent of the land." He said the NHSRCL has acquired 537 of the 1,387 hectares land required in Maharashtra and Gujarat.
In Gujarat, the NHSRCL has acquired 471 of 940 hectares of land, while in Maharashtra, it has acquired 66 of 431 hectares. "Of the nine hectares land required in Dadra and Nagar Haveli, the agency has been unable to acquire even a single piece of land," he said. The government had set a deadline for December 2018 to clear the land acquisition roadblock. Modi and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe on September 14, 2017 laid the foundation stone of the ambitious Rs 1.08 lakh crore ($17 billion) 508-km long Ahmedabad-Mumbai high-speed rail project.
- Anand Singh
