Mumbai Metro work at Aarey to stay on course despite NGT notice

MUMBAI: The car shed for the Metro 3 line from Colaba to Seepz will be built at Aarey in Goregaon, a Mumbai suburb, despite the National Green Tribunal’s ( NGT) order on Monday asking the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation ( MMRC) to stop work on setting up a casting workshop for the car shed.

A senior MMRC official described the NGT order as a ‘temporary setback’. “Under normal circumstances, the Metro car shed can be built even if it comes under the Eco Sensitive Zone (ESZ). In our case, the ministry of environment and forests has already excluded the Mumbai Metro Rail Shed from the Eco Sensitive Zone (ESZ), which has bolstered our case,” the official explained.

The Union environment and forests ministry exempted an area of 1.65 square km of land for the Mumbai Metro car shed from the ESZ in December this year.

An NGO, Vanashakti, which had been pleading for a buffer zone around the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) and is also opposed to the car shed at Aarey, then approached the NGT seeking a stay.

The tribunal on Monday asked the MMRC to stop any construction work on the site. MMRC officials are, however, confident that the stay would be lifted during the next hearing of the NGT which is on January 2, 2017.

“We deliberately asked for an earlier hearing as we believe we are on a strong legal ground,” said the official. The car depot is needed for Mumbai’s first underground Metro corridor which is a 33.5-km stretch from Colaba to Seepz through Bandra.

The project has been mired in controversy as Shiv Sena, an alliance partner for BJP in the state, and activists, have opposed the project, claiming it would harm the city’s only green lung.

But MMRC officials and even Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis have backed the project. Both Fadnavis and MMRC’s managing director are very keen that the car shed come up in Aarey, given the huge importance of the Metro 3 project.

The project would help lessen the ever rising load on congested local trains as well as the roads in Mumbai.