Patil may loosen purse strings for Mumbai

MUMBAI: Maharashtra finance minister Jayant Patil will be hard-pressed to support chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh’s grandiose Mumbai makeover dream in the state budget, to be presented on March 22. Mr Deshmukh has set 2009 as the year when Mumbai transformation would start showing results on the ground. With only two years at his disposal to prove that it’s not a pipedream, Mr Deshmukh’s pet project awaits some handsome allocations in the state budget for some of Mumbai’s major infrastructure programmes.

In the 2005-06 budget, the state had provided Rs 1,200 crore, under urban development head, exclusively for the state’s Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) share. The allocation, however, could not be spent because the Centre’s approval for JNNURM schemes came only in December 2005.

Officials in Mr Deshmukh’s Vision Mumbai team and BMC sources said the budget must provide for 15% of the outlay for the projects sanctioned under the Centre’s JNNURM. Under the JNNURM, the Centre sanctions 35% of the project cost while the local civic body or a state government agency or even a lending institution is to bear 50% cost. So far, the Centre has okayed phase I of Rs 2,376 crore Mumbai sewage disposal project and a part of Rs 1,835 crore Mumbai Urban Infrastructure Project (MUIP).

The state had submitted seven proposals to the Centre for consideration under the JNNURM, including Rs 1,600-crore middle Vaitarana water supply project, viability gap funding (VGF) for the three corridors under the first phase of Mumbai Metro Rail estimated to cost Rs 12,700 crore, Rs 1,300-crore Mithi river protection and development plan, Rs 1,200-crore Bandra-Worli sea-link, and Rs 852-crore Thane metro.

Officials said the Centre had refused to consider Bandra Worli sea-link under the JNNURM. “The state has now submitted this project to the central government for VGF consideration,” an official said. Two other schemes submitted later under the JNNURM — Rs 600-crore plan to construct water supply tunnels and Rs 253-crore proposal involving replacement of old pipelines — are pending with the Union urban development ministry. Apart from the JNNURM, the Centre has sanctioned Rs 1,800-crore Brihanmumbai storm water drains (Brimstowad) upgradation. “New Delhi will sanction Rs 1,200 crore, and the state will have to take care of the Rs 600 crore component for slum resettlement,” a secretary told ET.


We have requested the Centre to fund the slum resettlement component also under the schemes for socially weaker sections, but its response has not been favourable so far,” a state secretary told ET.

The state, officials believe, will have to set aside a sum for the slum resettlement component in the next fiscal as the BMC has already started working on Brimstowad.