While Mumbai is gearing up for the state Assembly polls and political parties have already begun their round of poll preparations. But it looks like the BJP’s top brasses are in no hurry to speed up the Metro projects, which are currently in progress, in Mumbai.
According to the Hindustan Times, the reason behind it is that the BJP wants to avoid a Nagpur Metro-like scenario in the city where the gap between trial runs and commercial operations stretched for more than a year. A source close to the development told the leading daily, “Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis does not want a repeat of Nagpur in Mumbai. He wants commercial operations to be in full-fledged mode before inaugurating it.”
The two Metro projects – Metro 7 (Dahisar E-Andheri E) and Metro 2A (Dahisar-DN Nagar) – in Mumbai which was slated to be completed in 2019, have now been delayed owing to issues in tendering of rakes. The MMRDA will have now set a new deadline of July 2020 for trial runs to begin, followed by commercial operations by the end of 2020. A BJP functionary told the leading daily, “Even if the Metros are not inaugurated before the Assembly elections, people know the work is in full swing and the credit for it goes to the BJP government.”