Mumbai, April 11: Hanging Garden. One of Mumbai’s most iconic tourist spots. A terrace garden. Built over a hundred years ago on the roof of the Malabar Hill Water Reservoir. A 7-acre garden with iconic views of Mumbai. Much in the news over the last few years, due to BMC’s own iconic views on how to splurge public money.
Initial plan and demolition proposal
First, BMC came out with a story that the 140-year-old Malabar Hill Reservoir was dangerous and dilapidated and that it could collapse at any time, just because it was 140 years old, and needed to be demolished and reconstructed.
The Malabar Hill Reservoir (MHR) has a capacity of about 150 million litres (ML) and is broken up into five smaller compartments. At first, the plan was to reconstruct MHR one compartment at a time. And to take care of the shortfall in storage, a smaller additional tank was planned, to be used during the construction phase.
Escalation of project cost
After awarding the contract for about Rs 700 crores, the BMC self-amended its plans and decided to demolish and reconstruct the entire MHR in one go, which necessitated a much larger additional tank to be built beforehand. The project cost was also largely escalated to about Rs 1,400 crores.
To carry out these revised plans, about 390 trees were to be sacrificed from the adjoining Hanging Garden precinct—trees having a cumulative age of 10,000 years. And it were these trees that truly exposed the scam. Because, when Mumbaikars looked into the records, it was found that the 140-year-old MHR was structurally good—better than any new 14-year-old tank.
Public outcry and re-evaluation
After a public outcry, BMC agreed to re-inspect MHR; and voila, it was found to be in great condition, requiring only minor repairs costing less than Rs 10 crores.
BMC were kind enough to scrap their Rs 1,400 crore plans to demolish and reconstruct the magnificent MHR. But it was difficult for them to scrap their plans to spend public money.
Revised plan and new tank proposal
So, they amended their plans and decided to repair three of the five compartments together at one time. This required a new larger alternate tank to be built, at an estimated cost of about Rs 700 crores, which in all probability will soon cross Rs 1,000 crores.
When asked why they needed to repair three compartments at a time, BMC pointed out that the interconnecting valves between the three compartments were not functioning due to non-use for several years. And, instead of repairing these inter-compartment valves for a few lakhs, they decided to build a new tank for a few hundred crores.
Concerns over green zone and spending
They insisted they could find no other space anywhere in Mumbai to build a water tank, because, after all, what better excuse to get their foot into the protected green lungs of the heritage Hanging Garden precinct than the water needs of Mumbai city.
This is no longer a story about trees. More trees get cut for society redevelopments on Malabar Hill than for MHR.
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This is now a story of BMC wanting to spend several hundred crores of public money when several lakhs would suffice instead, with the additional perks of entering and developing a protected green zone, where they would not be able to enter otherwise.
This is the story of Hanging Garden, much the same as every other BMC story in Mumbai.
Zoru Bhathena
98211.45767
zoru@hotmail.com
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