The call to her party’s alliance government in the state could not have been timed better. The financial capital desperately needs a mega infrastructure upgrade but has seen enduring delays coupled with a lack of clear policy on implementation of crucial projects. And the limping progress of a plan to build a chain of sea links to decongest the main corridors of the city is symptomatic of this muddle.

Nine years after construction on the first sea link began — the one that connects Bandra to Worli (BWSL) and was opened today — another sea link, the Worli-Haji Ali Sea Link, which is an extension of the BWSL and part of what was planned as the Western Freeway, remains chronically delayed.

In the pipeline for years, it suffered fresh delays after the 26/11 terror attacks on the city when private bidders sought extensions from the state government citing the slowdown. The bids are currently being evaluated by consultants and a final call is to be taken by the state Cabinet. Two consortia, the Reliance Infrastructure-Hyundai team and Hindustan Construction Company (HCC)-John Laing-Samsung are in the fray for the 3.5-km bridge.

Chief Minister Ashok Chavan today promised Sonia Gandhi that a decision on this contract would be taken at the earliest. His deputy, Chhagan Bhujbal, stressed that projects should stick to deadlines and agencies should tackle issues like protests and clearances quickly to avoid delays like the one that stalled BWSL and doubled its cost from Rs 400 crore to about Rs 850 crore.

“The number of cars on the road are increasing — affordable cars like Tata Nano are coming which would further add load on the infrastructure. We should start work on Worli-Haji Ali Sea link and the Haji Ali-Nariman Point link simultaneously to save time,” he said, referring to another sea link in the chain that remains a contentious proposal decades after the idea of high-speed corridors linking suburban Mumbai to business districts in South Mumbai through a series of sea links was first discussed.

The last arm of the Western Freeway was to have been the Haji Ali-Nariman Point sea link, whose design has been altered several times over with no clarity yet on which model the government believes is ideal.

In fact, a sea link to Nariman Point has been shelved entirely, since this structure would mar the view of the government’s new ambition — a statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji set to stand taller than the Statue of Liberty and located in the sea off Marine Drive.

Result: the final phase of the Western Freeway project could now be a combination of a sea bridge, a tunnel and then a shallow tunnel below Marine Drive, all of which, senior bureaucrats say, in private, are “overambitious plans.”

The consultants have recommended a sea bridge from Haji Ali to Priyadarshini Park, followed by a deep (drill and blast) tunnel via Malabar Hill to Tambe Chowk and then a cut-and-cover tunnel from Tambe Chowk to Nariman Point.

The 10.9-km link between Haji Ali and Nariman Point could be constructed on a build, operate and transfer (BOT) basis like the Worli-Haji Ali sea link, but this financial model too remains unclear. Similarly, the 22.5-km Mumbai Trans-Harbour Link (MTHL) proposed between Sewri in Mumbai and Nhava in Navi Mumbai has been on the drawing board for nearly three decades.

Once built, it would be the longest sea link in the country but its fate is uncertain with bidders apprehensive to vie for the contract. “Now we’re exploring other financial models to take up this project. We would require 40 per cent of the total cost from the Central government. Other government agencies would share the remaining 60 per cent as they too would benefit from the project — agencies like Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra Ltd (CIDCO), etc,” a senior bureaucrat said.

He added that it is becoming increasingly difficult for the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority to fund the Rs 7,500-crore project alone.

But the government was not always expected to raise funds for the mega project. In February 2008, after an acrimonious litigation which ended with the Supreme Court stating that the state government had unfairly disqualified the Reliance Energy Ltd-led consortium from the bidding process for what was then a PPP project, the government went on to state that the Anil Ambani consortium’s bid, the lowest, was “too unrealistic”. The government then opted for the state-funded model at a much higher cost, after losing years of groundwork to the failed PPP plan.