MUMBAI: The Maha Vikas Aghadi government on Tuesday set up a fresh panel – the third so far – to look into the Metro 3 car shed deadlock. It will be headed by state chief secretary Sanjay Kumar and will look into the feasibility of both the Aarey and Kanjurmarg lands as car shed locations. Sources said the state government may strike a deal with the Centre and entrust the BKC land for the bullet train project in order to get the NDA government to hand over the Kanjurmarg land for the Metro car shed.
TOI had reported on December 25 that a third committee was set to be formed, after the first panel of 2015 and the second one set up by the Uddhav Thackeray-led government after the MVA came to power last year.
Sanjay Kumar will be assisted by environment secretary Manisha Mhaiskar, IIT professor K V Krishna Rao and MMRDA director Pramod Ahuja, while MMRDA additional commissioner Sonia Sethi will be member secretary of the new committee which has been asked to complete its task within a month.
On terms of reference of the committee, a senior bureaucrat said it will study the technical design of the Aarey car shed, examine if more land would be required for the project in future and more trees required to be cut. Second, a comprehensive plan will be drafted for Metro lines 3 and 6 and third, the design of the Kanjurmarg car shed will be checked and the possibility of constructing the integrated depot for line 3, 4 and 6 examined.
“The main focus of the committee will be to compare the Aarey and Kanjurmarg sheds, both economically and technically, and to check which is the better side and where the project will be completed before schedule. We are studying the Aarey car shed afresh. This does not mean the CM will reverse his decision to scrap the Aarey car shed, but it will be the first time the two sites are examined simultaneously, on merit. The status of both sites will be put in the public domain,” he said.
The bureaucrat said earlier, the MVA government had appointed a committee headed by veteran bureaucrat Manoj Saunik, but its findings which were submitted in January this year were one-sided as it never studied the Kanjurmarg site on merit. “The Saunik committee report should have been put in the public domain long ago. Then there would have been real feedback on its conclusions,” he said.
A month after Thackeray took over the reins of the state in November 2019, he scrapped the car shed in Aarey colony on the grounds that it would have an adverse impact on the environment and shifted it to Kanjurmarg though that land was under litigation. The Bombay HC on December 16 stayed the suburban collector’s decision to allot land for the Kanjurmarg car shed.