In a major jolt to Maha Vikas Aaghadi government’s decision to shift the metro-3 car depot to Kanjurmarg, the Centre has asked to keep the depot at the original Aarey site and rethink the decision of moving it out.
In a letter dated March 17, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, under secretary Sunil Kumar has said that the Aarey land for the depot was the right choice considering technical issues.
“As the land at Aarey is sufficient to meet the current as well as design life traffic requirement up to the year 2055, it would not be a prudent decision to shift the location of the shed to Kanjurmarg at this stage of the project on this premise particularly when the project is in significantly advance stage of completion and the combined depot plans will introduce operational and maintenance bottlenecks in the functioning of the network for the entire lifecycle of this high capacity metro line,” the letter said.
The Centre has expressed concern that there can be issues in regular operation period, signalling system in the metro line. It also said that the state’s plans as factually incorrect on their alternative location at Kanjurmarg.
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“Further, the land at Aarey is free from all encumbrances whereas the land at Kanjurmarg is under multiple litigations. In fact, legal challenges, which were primarily on environmental concerns, for setting the depot at Aarey has already been settled by higher courts including Honourable Supreme Court and as of now there are no legal impediments at the original site.”
Pointing at the inordinate delay in the work, the letter asked to speed up the process. “GoM is requested to reconsider their decision to shift the Depot of line-3 from Aarey colony to Kanjurmarg. GoM is requested to allow the restart of the depot work of Line-3 at Aarey colony for expeditious completion of the project of public interest with a due exploration of possible optimisation in the present plans of the depot at Aarey itself. The project is already inordinately delayed, and it is expected that there will be further delay in the project if uncertainties continue,” it said.
