Rail officials hope Maharashtra speeds up land acquisition for MUTP 3

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Rail officials hope Maharashtra speeds up land acquisition for MUTP 3

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Roads and Rails

50% land in hand will ensure loan from Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

Railway officials have urged the State government to expedite the land acquisition process for two key infrastructure projects as it was holding up the process of procuring an institutional loan from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) for the Mumbai Urban Transport Project 3 (MUTP 3).

The land acquisition process for the Virar-Dahanu quadrupling and the new corridor between Panvel and Karjat is under way.

The Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation (MRVC), which is executing both the projects, is negotiating a loan worth approximately ₹3,500 crore for the ₹10,947-crore MUTP 3.

September start eyed

Senior officials said one of the key conditions of the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) is to acquire a major portion of the land required by the project before processing a loan from a multilateral funding agency such as the AIIB. “We are hoping that the State completes around 50% of the land acquisition for the projects by the end of this month so that the loan formalities may be completed by early September and we can make most of the fair season post monsoon,” a senior railway official said.

Around 58 hectares of land needs to be acquired for the Virar-Dahanu project, which has a completion cost of ₹3,578 crore. MRVC hopes to finance ₹2,684 of the project cost with the help of a loan.

The Panvel-Karjat new corridor involves acquiring 33 hectares of land for which the agency is aiming to get external financing to the tune of ₹1,280 crore of the completion cost of ₹2,782 crore.

In the interim budget, announced in February, the centre allocated ₹578.7 crore towards MUTP 3.

Senior officials are hoping for another round of allocation from the centre given that work on the two projects has taken off and will gather pace after the monsoon ends.

The two projects have been planned to increase suburban services between Dahanu and Virar as well as provide a direct connectivity for commuters between Navi Mumbai and Karjat. While land acquisition is currently under way, railway officials are hoping that the speed increases in the coming months.

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