The NCP’s Jaidutt Kshirsagar, minister for public works and chairman of the MSRDC has opposed the efforts of the MMRDA tobag the Rs 8,000-crore, 22-km Mumbai trans-harbour link project.
The Congress-Nationalist Congress Party game of one-upmanship looks set to spill over to a new area. The NCP’s Jaidutt Kshirsagar, minister for public works (public undertakings) and chairman of the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC), has opposed the efforts of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) to bag the Rs 8,000-crore, 22-km Mumbai trans-harbour link (MTHL) project. Instead, he believes the MSRDC is better equipped to build the project.
“One must remember that the MMRDA is also a state government body. It cannot take away projects from the MSRDC,’’ Kshirsagar told DNA. “When we have struggled for the last few years working on the MTHL project, how can the government take it away from us?”
The MMRDA is controlled by chief minister Ashok Chavan, who also heads the urban development department.
Reacting to the criticism that the MSRDC is financially too weak to undertake a project of this magnitude, Kshirsagar asserted that his organisation could build the link without dipping into state coffers. More significantly, he questioned the MMRDA’s own financial strength, which primarily comes from the prime land it is sitting on.
“It (MMRDA) has earned all its revenue through the sale of government-owned land. If they feel only they are capable of constructing the MTHL, they should be made to deposit all their earnings in the state government’s treasury. Their strength is the state government’s strength,” the minister said.
Kshirsagar and a group of NCP ministers have already expressed their opposition to the MMRDA being given the project purely on the basis of its ability to make money from land.
He says the state does not allow the MSRDC to raise its own funds and gets zero budgetary support from the government. The state government had also still to pay back Rs 2,500 crore owed to the corporation for the construction of various road projects in the state.
Saying he was optimistic about the MSRDC bagging the trans-harbour project, Kshirsagar took pot-shots at the Congress-led government on its alleged double-standards. “On the one hand they say the MSRDC is not capable of constructing big ticket projects since it is not financially sound; on the other hand they try and block every possible source of revenue for the MSRDC.’’
The minister also said that the model suggested by MSRDC was better compared to the one suggested by the MMRDA. “We intend to connect the MTHL to the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. We will build a 22-km sea link with three lanes on each side. The unique part will be a box-style construction under the girders of the sea link on each side. This will be useful in future if a metro is to be run along the route. You must remember that MMRDA’s total cost of construction is Rs8,311 crore with a metro. We are giving the
proposal at a cost of Rs7,900 crore with the option of a metro.”
“We will not be taking a single penny from the government of Maharashtra. We have been already given an in principle assurance by the central government for 20% viability gap funding,” said the minister.
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