Mumbai: For over a decade now, Mumbai has been a maze of construction, with several big-ticket projects ongoing in the city still. And while these haven’t quite reached the finishing line yet, compared to 2020 and 2021 — when Covid slowed down construction — these made significant progress in 2022.
ThePrint brings you the list of five such big-ticket projects:
Two new metro lines 2A and 7
In April this year, Uddhav Thackeray, then chief minister, had flagged off the first phase of two metro lines — 2A (Dahisar to Andheri West DN Nagar) and 7 (Dahisar East to Andheri East) in the western suburbs.
And in January 2023, these lines will be fully operational according to the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), the nodal agency for all elevated metro projects. With this, Mumbai will get the two new Metro lines nine years after its first — Mumbai Metro One — in 2014.
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Metro 3 tunneling complete
One of the most controversial lines of the Mumbai Metro — the underground Metro 3 — saw a good push this year.
The daunting job of tunnelling this 33.5 km line was completed 100 per cent earlier this month and, around the same time, the Supreme Court cleared the deck for the metro car shed to be constructed at Aarey, which has been a political controversy in the state for over half a decade.
With these major hurdles behind it, the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation (MMRC) hopes to commission the first phase of Metro 3 by the end of 2023.
Maharashtra Samruddhi Mahamarg
Stuck for over two years due to Covid, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the first phase of the Mumbai-Nagpur Samruddhi Expressway — running from Nagpur to Shirdi — on 11 December.
The expressway is Maharashtra deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis’ pet project, which he had first announced in 2015 when he was Maharashtra CM.
The Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation Ltd (MSRDC) — the agency implementing the project — now hopes the final phase from Mumbai to Shirdi will be commissioned by mid-2023. The 701-km highway is the second major expressway in the state after the Mumbai-Pune Expressway.
Also Read: 10 highways, 3,000 km: Maharashtra’s grand plan to connect almost every district in next 5 yrs
Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail Corridor
The Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project — India’s first high-speed rail project — covers 508 km, with most of it in Gujarat. A pet project of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it was sanctioned in 2015.
In Maharashtra, the National High-Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL), the implementing agency of the project, is developing the Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) and stations in Thane, Vasai and Boisar.
But the project faced delays in land acquisition in the state.
However, within two months of the current Maharashtra government — comprising Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Eknath Shinde faction of Shiv Sena — coming to power, land acquisition and other approvals came in at much faster speeds and now over 98 per cent of the land has been acquired.
Financial bids for the Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) station were opened on 29 December.
Dharavi Redevelopment Project
After a delay of nearly two decades and several failed rounds of tendering since its inception in 2004, the Eknath Shinde-led government decided to revive the Dharavi Redevelopment Project in September this year and approved fresh global bids.
In November, the Adani group emerged as the highest bidder for the 259-hectare project, with Adani Realty having submitted a financial bid of over Rs 5,000 crore for the redevelopment of Dharavi, considered to be Asia’s biggest slum cluster.
(Edited by Anumeha Saxena)
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