Prez to inaugurate work on Mumbai Metro II today

MUMBAI: The work on the Anil Dhirubai Ambani group���s signature project, the Rs 2,300-crore Mumbai Metro II, will begin on Tuesday.

President Pratibha Patil will perform the bhumipooja at a ceremony to be organised at Bandra���s MMRDA grounds. This is RInfra���s second metro project in Mumbai.

Mumbai Metro-I, being executed by RInfra, is expected to be completed by September 2010. The Metro II project will be developed by a consortium of RInfra and Canada���s SNC-Lavalin on Build-Operate-Transfer basis.

Winning the contracts for both the metro projects in Mumbai so far, RInfra promises to invest more than Rs 13,500 crore in Mumbai���s metro sector.

The 30km-long second metro line in the city will connect the northern suburb of Charkop to Mankhurd in the east and will have 27 stations. The Metro corridor will be mainly connecting areas which do not have any rail-based mass transport system at present. The Metro II is expected to be operational by 2015.