Government to sell 30-acre plot in Bandra to fund Mumbai-Nagpur expressway project
Outline of the plot from Google maps
The state government is planning to sell a prime 30-acre plot near the Bandra-Worli sealink in a bid to fund its ambitious Mumbai-Nagpur Expressway project.
The plot, which is located at the Bandra end of the sealink, is estimated to fetch around Rs 2,000 crore, a fraction of the Rs 46,000 crore required for the proposed project.
However, the land is reportedly being sold to ensure that the project, which is being executed by the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation, does not face any monetary issues in the beginning and meets its start deadline of year-end.
Apart from selling the land, the government is also in talks with foreign lenders like Asian Development Bank and the World Bank to fund the project.
According to one report, at least three parties – including the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, Mumbai Metro Corporation and BJP MLA Ashish Shelar – had sought the land for various purposes. However, the state government has rejected all claims for the land.
Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis, who hails from Nagpur, has put maximum weight behind the expressway project, naming it the ‘Maharashtra Prosperity Expressway’. In a presentation with the stakeholders last month, the CM also claimed that the highway will take Maharashtra 20 years ahead of any other state in the country.
The project, however, isn’t limited to the construction of the 710 km of road connecting the two cities. It also entails the construction of industrial clusters and townships along the highway.
To ensure that the project does not miss its October 2019 deadline, the government has also ditched the conventional land acquisition model and opted for the land pooling model, wherein farmers are made partners and given a certain percentage of the developed land.
