The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) is racing against time, as it is yet to procure land for a proposed Metro yard at Dahisar for the Mumbai Metro-7 (Dahisar East-Andheri East) line, which the state government plans to throw open next year. MMRDA is nodal body for the project.

The non-government organisation (NGO) Janhit Manch had filed a right-to-information (RTI) query earlier this month, seeking a copy of the yard plan for Metro 7.

The MMRDA, however, responded saying, “As the land is not in MMRDA’s possession, this information is not available on date.” While the authority was to commence operations of Metro-7 and Metro-2A (Dahisar-DN Nagar) by December 2019, a deadlock in procurement of coaches resulted in the deadline being pushed to 2020. Trial runs for Metro-7 and Metro-2A are expected to begin in November 2019.

“Until we get land at Dahisar, land at Charkop [yard for Metro-2A] will be used as a depot for both Metro-7 and Metro-2A. The authority who has the land is yet to hand over the land at Dahisar to MMRDA and it will take some time,” said a MMRDA official, who did not wish to be named.

Nitin Killawala, an architect and member of Janit Manch, termed it “a misplaced agenda of development”.

“The Metro-7 work was started in haste in 2016 without proper planning in place. Today, even after three years, there is no land for the Metro yard,” said Killawala, who along with several residents in Powai, have also been demanding that the Metro-6 (Swami Samarth Nagar-Jogeshwari-Vikhroli) line be converted into an underground corridor. In January, the NGO had also sought copies of the casting yard plans for Metro-6, but, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) responded saying “land for the casting yard is yet to be fixed”. The DMRC is executing the project on behalf of MMRDA and its deadline is 2024.

First Published: Feb 19, 2019 00:15 IST