New Delhi: Seventeen years after it was first planned, residents of Mumbai can now finally see the Bandra-Versova sea link—the northwards extension of the coastal road—finally taking shape. However, the pace has been very slow.
Work on the project is just about 30 percent complete prompting Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis to direct the contractor to accelerate work by deploying more manpower and machinery, officials from the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) told ThePrint.
The Fadnavis government is pushing for the project to be fully complete by 2028, a deadline that has already been revised several times.
The project is also facing an additional challenge of finding land for a casting yard. Until now, it was functioning with two casting yards, one at Malad and the other at Bandra.
“But, the Bandra one has to be vacated as it is part of the land parcel given to Adani Realty for development,” a senior MSRDC official who did not wish to be named told ThePrint.
The casting land was part of the 24 acres near Mahim Bay on the Bandra Worli sea link road that the MSRDC monetised by giving it out to the highest bidder for development. Adani Realty had turned out to be the most preferred bidder, promising the highest revenue share to MSRDC at 22.79 percent.
Transitioning from two casting yards to just one, which is close to the northern end of the city in Malad, is expected to significantly impact work as it will slow down the process of casting segments. MSRDC officials said, it will also be more difficult to transport the casted segments to the work site as heavy duty transportation is feasible only during the night hours.
Only 3,000 of the 14,000 segments needed for the Bandra-Versova sea link have been cast so far, MSRDC engineers said. The pre-cast units form the viaduct atop the piers.
Slow foundation work
The sea-link includes a 9.8-km bridge over the sea and four connectors at Bandra, Carter Road, Juhu and Versova, taking the total road length under the project to 17.17 km. The sea link will cut the travel time between Bandra and Versova from 45 minutes to roughly about 10-15 minutes and enable seamless connectivity from south Mumbai to the northwestern suburbs along with the coastal road and the Bandra Worli sea link.
Until now, the MSRDC has completed only about 40 percent of the foundation work, which involves drilling piles under the sea and installing pile caps on which the piers are erected.
Overall, the contractor has to drill and install 3,000 piles, out of which installation of only 1,200 have been completed. An equal percentage of piers have also been installed, officials said.
“Working inside the sea on the already choppy western coast means that we cannot construct anything during the monsoon. From June to the end of September, there is not much scope for work,” the official said.
The foundation work is being done using jacked up barges—mobile self-elevating platforms used in nearshore and offshore construction that serve as stable working decks, resistant to waves—and reverse circulation drilling machines.
“Earlier, the contractor was working with ten jacked up barges. After we pushed them to increase manpower and machinery, they have increased the number to 12 for more rapid piling work,” the official said.
A string of delays
The sea link has had a long journey. It was first planned in 2009 on a public-private partnership model. In 2011, the then Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) government’s cabinet committee on infrastructure had approved a detailed plan for implementing the project.
The plan, however, did not take off immediately, the Congress-NCP government under CM Prithviraj Chavan started exploring the idea of building a coastal road from Marine Drive in south Mumbai to Kandivali, a northern suburb, by reclaiming land from the sea.
The coastal road project was eventually implemented from Marine Drive to the Worli end of the Bandra-Worli sea link. Following this, the plan for a Bandra-Versova sea link post that was brought back on the table in 2017 when the then government of the BJP and the undivided Shiv Sena under Devendra Fadnavis decided to implement it as an Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contract. The MSRDC was appointed as the nodal agency. At the time, the cost of the project was estimated to be Rs 7,502 crore.
In 2018, the project’s cost was revised to Rs 11,332.8 crore on the basis of the amount quoted in the bids received for the project. The state government also asked the MSRDC to consider joining the sea link to the Western Express Highway with a connector from Juhu.
In 2019, the MSRDC finalised a joint venture of Reliance Infrastructure and Astaldi as the contractor and the construction eventually started in 2020. The project ran into several hurdles, including a slowdown in work due to the covid pandemic.
In 2021, the MSRDC had issued a notice to the contractor asking the joint venture to explain the reasons for the slow pace of work when the stated deadline was 2025.
Reliance Infrastructure exited the joint venture in January 2022 and transferred its stake to Apco Infratech with the approval of the MSRDC.
The project was also delayed due to objections from the fishing community, who opposed the project on the grounds that it would impact their livelihoods, after which the state government set up a panel to look into their grievances. The project then underwent some significant design changes to address the concerns of the fishing community.
In 2024, the cost of the project was revised to Rs 18,120.96 crore.
(Edited by Vidhi Bhutra)
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