MMRC’s new plan for car depot in Aarey

The Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation (MMRC) on Thursday announced that it has appointed a Delhi-based contractor for constructing Metro car depot of Colaba-Seepz Metro-3 underground corridor. The MMRC has said that it has tweaked the plan and now 3,130 trees will be affected due to the construction of the car depot. 

MMRC said that it is going to keep 1,073 trees untouched in five hectares of space near the car depot which will be known as green zone. SK Gupta, acting managing director, MMRC, said, “We are going to replant and transplant the affected trees and the number of trees will be depending on the number approved by the tree authority of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).”

The MMRC on June 23 awarded the contract to Sam (India) Builtwell Private Limited and is going to construct depot on total of 22 hectares. The remaining land will be for the green zone and access way that will be required to connect the Metro with the alignment towards the Western Express Highway.

The proposed depot work is going to be completed within 2.5 years and the estimated cost is Rs 328 crore. The contract includes construction of depot, Aarey Metro station and workshop building. The car depot is being designed for 35 rakes of eight cars.

Meanwhile, work on the 32-km-long Metro-3 underground corridor began in October 2016 with MMRC recently announcing that it has completed around 10 per cent of the civil work. 

The conflict

The construction of car depot inside Aarey Milk colony was challenged by environmentalists in the National Green Tribunal (NGT) 
They have contended that there is stay by NGT in any construction activity in Aarey colony. However, MMRC has denied the claim, saying that they are going by books and there is no stay on the same