MMRDA commissioner Ratnakar Gaikwad was an angry man on Thursday.
MMRDA commissioner Ratnakar Gaikwad was an angry man on Thursday. Just a day after ‘Metro man’ E Sreedharan criticised the Mumbai metro stating that “it is heading towards a financial disaster”, the metropolitan commissioner retorted by saying that his remark was damaging to the progress of the project and in very bad taste.
“Here is a private public partnership (PPP) model which has surprised even the transport experts in the US. Only one person seems to have a problem with it — E Sreedharan. His remarks on Mumbai metro are totally uncalled for,” said Gaikwad.
Sreedharan flayed the authority for implementing the PPP model. Refuting his charges of lack of efficiency among state-level bureaucrats to get funds from the Centre, Gaikwad said: “Many officials at the Centre are my batch mates. We have been camping in Delhi for days together to get the approval for viability gap. How do you think we have got a huge viability gap (Rs1,534 crore) funded for the second line of metro?”
Reacting to the remarks that the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) chief made about himself no longer being involved in the making of Mumbai metro, Gaikwad added that Sreedharan has been in touch with the authority officials. He also said that there is a huge difference between DMRC and MMRDA.
“DMRC is limited to constructing the Delhi metro while we are a holistic planning authority. We are implementing projects ranging from constructing dams to improving water supply to the metropolitan region to setting up of an innovation park which will help corporates in research and development. He (Sreedharan) thinks that we are sitting on a goldmine with our land bank. How can we use the entire money for constructing only the metro? For the nine lines, we need close to Rs42,000 crore and it is certainly beyond the financial ability of our organisation,” said Gaikwad.
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