The Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) has asked the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) to pay Rs 25 crore if its wants any documents pertaining to the Mumbai Trans Harbour Link (MTHL).While the MSRDC was earlier executing the project,the mandate was later handed over to the MMRDA. We had asked the MSRDC to hand over documents pertaining to the MTHL,but they asked us to pay up a certain amount. The agency has claimed that it has spent crores to conduct studies, said Rahul Asthana,Metropolitan Commissioner. The papers demanded by the MMRDA involve bid documents,environment clearances,feasibility study and also reports on the financial models which were to be used for the project. Now that they are not executing the project,there should not be any problem in handing over the documents to us, he said. The MTHL has been the bone of contention between the MMRDA and MSRDC,the former headed by the Congress and the later controlled by the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). After failing twice to make any progress in the project,the MMRDA (then headed by Ratnakar Gaikwad,who is now the Chief Secretary) asked the state government to hand over the project to the MMRDA. A senior MSRDC official said the agency has done necessary studies pertaining to the project and it did make sense to charge the MMRDA. The MSRDC has claimed to have spent around Rs 25 crore for conducting several studies for the project and its poor financial position is well-known. The agency has also decided not to connect the MTHL to Mumbai-Pune Expressway as decided earlier. We will be terminating the expressway at National Highway no 4 at Chirle near Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust. From Chirle,the expressway is some 20 km away and it will not be possible to incorporate the patch in the project. It can be done separately, added Asthana. He also said that the Sewri end of the MTHL will have three interchanges. One will go towards Worli,second towards the south and third towards the north. We are also looking at the possibility of connecting it to the Eastern Freeway. But the entire exercise will be complex. The agency has also decided to approach the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) before any consultant is appointed. The agency has already invited tenders for conducting the techno-economic feasibility study for the project. By the time we zero in on a firm,we can approach the MoEF as the clearances take time. We also need to take revised clearance from the MoEF as the earlier one expired last year and did not incorporate the Metro rail, Asthana added.
