Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, in his first big move, overturned the previous Uddhav Thackeray-led government's decision of moving the Metro 3 car shed from Aarey in Mumbai. Fadnavis directed the state Advocate General and the administration to submit a proposal on building the Metro-3 car shed in Aarey Colony instead of Kanjurmarg. Fadnavis asked the advocate general to represent the government's side of making the car shed in Aarey Colony.

Officials in the urban development department said the matter is currently in court, and the next hearing will be held 15 days later. The advocate general was asked how can the project be shifted to Aarey Colony as the previous MVA government had proposed to shift the car shed to Kanjurmarg and designated Aarey Colony as a reserve forest; they said. Fadnavis told the officials that the 33-km-long Colaba-Bandra-Seepz underground Metro project is delayed due to the court case. Meanwhile, the NCP objected to the new government's proposal to shift the Metro car shed to Aarey Colony. In a tweet, NCP spokesperson Clyde Crasto said, "With so many important issues that need to be looked into in Maharashtra, what does the new Dy. CM Devendra Fadnavis do? He proposes to move the Metro car shed back to Aarey. Re-creating a problem solved by MVA Govt. the Green lung of Mumbai is in danger once again. What will he gain?"

Gaurav Pradhan, in his analysis of the Aarey metro Car Shed issue, says it is turning out to be another case of the NGO mafia trying to halt critical projects in India with the help of useful idiots (uninformed citizenry who fall for their propaganda and then spread it). To begin with, Line 3 of the Mumbai Metro is a 33.5 km long underground metro connecting Colaba and SEEPZ, with 26 underground and 1 at-grade station.

Line-3’s Route Information

Line-3 – Aqua Line: Cuffe Parade – BKC – SEEPZ – Aarey Colony

• Length: 33.5 km
• Type: Underground & At-Grade
• Depot: Aarey Colony (tentative; possibly Kanjurmarg pending court’s decision)
• Number of Stations: 27
• Station Names: Cuffe Parade, Vidhan Bhavan, Churchgate, Hutatma Chowk, CSMT, Kalbadevi, Girgaon, Grant Road, Mumbai Central, Mahalaxmi, Science Museum, Acharya Atre Chowk, Worli, Siddhivinayak, Dadar, Shitladevi, Dharavi, Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC), Vidyanagri, Santa Cruz, CSIA Terminal 1 (Domestic Airport), Sahar Road, CSIA Terminal 2 (International Airport), Marol Naka, MIDC, SEEPZ and Aarey Colony (only at-grade station)

Key Figures

• Estimated Cost: Rs. 23,136 crore
• Estimated Daily Ridership: 17.0 Lakhs/Day (2021)
• Under Construction: 33 km
• On Hold: 0.5 km (Ramp – Aarey Colony Station)
• Rolling Stock: 248 coaches (31 x 8) by Alstom capable of UTO (Unattended Train Operation) with GoA4

Pradhan elaborates that this line is possibly the most critical line of the Mumbai Metro as it connects 6 prominent business districts (Cuffe Parade, Nariman Point, Ballard Estate, Lower Parel area, BKC, and SEEPZ), 2 outstation terminuses (CSMT, Mumbai Central), and 2 terminals of Airport.

Now once again NGO mafia is confusing people by saying that the “green lungs of Mumbai will be destroyed”. Firstly, many are confused between Sanjay Gandhi National Park and Aarey.

Sanjay Gandhi National Park is spread over 11,687 hectares. Aarey Colony is separate from it and is 1287 hectares. The metro shed will be built only on 30 hectares of Aarey Land, and even in those 30 hectares, 5 hectares would be kept intact, and 25 be used for the car shed.

Thus, only 2 percent of the entire Aarey Colony would be used for the metro car shed. Also, 83% of this car-shed area is already without tree cover. Also, this car-shed location is surrounded by 3 major roads - JVLR, Marol-Maroshi Road, and Goregaon Powai road.

Now talking in terms of trees, as per the 2017-2018 tree census, Mumbai has approximately 29.75 lakh trees, and Aarey Milk Colony has approximately 4.8 lakh trees, the metro car-shed area has 3691 trees, out of which 461 trees will be transplanted and 2,185 trees cut while the rest won't be touched.

But to compensate for the 2,185 cut trees, 6 times more new trees are to be planted and geotagged. Not many activists would tell these facts.

Nowhere is the claim by NGO mafia-led activists close to the reality that Mumbai’s green lungs are being destroyed. And Aarey is not a forest as claimed by activists. It is a dairy and grazing land. National Green Tribunal and Bombay High Court have rejected the activist's claim of Aarey being a forest. That’s why the name -Aarey ‘Milk’ Colony.

Now I do agree that tree cutting is not desirable. But the fact is, that the metro does require a car shed to function. The metro 3 line is definitely going to be extremely busy and thus would need a car-shed capable of catering to 8 car trains. 

Many alternate sites like MMRDA ground BKC, Kalina University, Backbay Reclamation, Mumbai Port Trust, Dharavi, etc have been considered at DPR and technical committee stage but rejected on the grounds of inadequate land area, technical suitability, environment, legal/ownership constraints, and regulatory constraints.

The Kanjurmarg land which activists claim as an alternative is not only in a title dispute between 2 parties but also more than 10 km from the line! Car sheds are never built 10 km away from the line. It is not that the state government has directly out of its will selected land in Aarey. An environmental impact assessment study report has been done and also Supreme Court has upheld the car shed being built at Aarey.

Every day on average 10 people die while travelling on the suburban railway network. This is in addition to those dying in road accidents.

This line alone has the potential to take lakhs of vehicular trips off the road - reducing their fossil fuel usage as well as their emissions. Also, along with other metro lines, will surely reduce crowding in suburban local trains. Thus, overall this project will have a highly positive impact on Mumbai’s environment and also on Mumbaikar’s life.

Now just imagine the impact when the entire interconnected network of Mumbai Metro of more than 300 km will be up and running in the next 5-7 years as lines open up one by one.

Do not allow NGO mafia and activists to disrupt this critical project in the name of the environment. Delay in this line has already increased costs from 23,000 crores to 30,000 crores.

Of these 30,000 crores, 11,198.33 crores have already been invested, 61% of tunelling work, 40% station work completed, and 10 system contracts awarded.

A day’s delay in this project would cost ₹4.3 crores.

Now for a fun fact

The entire Royal Palms project, which includes a golf course, is sandwiched between Sanjay Gandhi National Park and Aarey Milk Colony. Also, the entire Film City is practically an encroachment of Sanjay Gandhi National Park. And if you compare old and new satellite images of film city, you will see how many trees have been cut to make way for studios and sets.

Both of these are much bigger than Metro Car-shed. But none of the NGO brigade and activists protested against Royal Palms and Film Industry.

Also, most Bollymorons who travel in big diesel guzzling SUVs even when they are travelling alone and sometimes even use private jets are suddenly pretending to care for the environment.

Do not bother about them. As these celebrities have a much higher carbon footprint lifestyle than common Mumbaikars. Do not fall for these hypocrites’ propaganda. If they indeed care about trees, the first thing these celebs should do is a lobby with production houses and get them to collectively return more than 30 hectares of their land to the state government for afforestation.

Not many celebs would use the metro to travel to film cities and events, despite the fact that it would be possible for them to do so from Bandra, Juhu as well as Lokhandwala once the metro network comes up.

Any stalling of Line 3 metro work would have a huge negative impact on several other infrastructure projects. Do not allow this.

Do share this post in the National interest. Even feel free to copy-paste it with/without credits. Also copy paste and send it to your WhatsApp contacts, especially Mumbaikars.

Metro 3 timeline

Dhaval Desai from Observer Research Foundation (ORF) stets in his blog:

While the lockdown has impacted the timelines of all the ongoing metro corridors, the uncertain fate of the Metro 3 car depot at Aarey, a crucial terminal link, is now threatening to derail the entire project. With further construction halted since November, the MMRC is incurring a daily loss of Rs 4.30 crore, of which, losses on the loan interest component at 2% per annum alone are pegged at Rs 1.50 crore per day. The rest of the losses are pertaining to resource non-utilization claims raised by contractors and other incidental costs including depreciation of infrastructure that is constructed but lying idle. Senior officials of MMRC who were interviewed by this author said, while the civil work has been fully completed, work on the other ‘packages’ including the approach ramp, power supply, high tension wiring, and the conversion of the Marol-Maroshi road into an underpass, are either completed or at an advanced of execution. By the time the work was halted last November, the MMRC had spent over Rs 100 crore on the car depot.

However, the decision to relocate the car depot would make the city pay a much heavier penalty in terms of lost opportunity. Its relocation would lead to an additional delay of at least four years. Soil consolidation, a critical exercise, would take up to two-and-a-half years, which could go beyond three years if the new site is low-lying with marine clay or mudflats. The bidding process will take up to six months. The construction of tunnels, elevated tracks, traction, power supply, signalling, etc., even if undertaken on a war footing, will take another year-and-a-half. And this too would be possible only in an unlikely scenario that the work proceeds without glitches posed by court cases, rehabilitation, and other environmental challenges.

Given this scenario, instead of portraying the Maha Vikas Aghadi government’s clear intention of protecting Mumbai’s fast-disappearing natural heritage, both the decisions — seeking an alternative site as well as the declaration of the reserved forest — have raised a number of questions. First, the land of the Metro 3 depot at Aarey is not included in the welcome declaration of a 600-acre area as a reserved forest. It thus still risks future commercial exploitation. Second, if the intention of the government was indeed to ensure that the entire Aarey green belt that forms the periphery of the SGNP was protected from encroachments, it should have declared the entire 1,800-acre area as a reserved forest rather than being selective. Third, if the government is duly justified in safeguarding Aarey for the city’s long-term environmental sustainability, it has little justification for putting its collective might behind the 9.8-kilometer coastal road project along the city’s western shoreline. Does the coastal road, which seeks to reclaim land from the sea that is nearly four times the size of the forest uprooted by the Metro 3 car shed in Aarey, not pose any environmental hazard, especially when international studies have concluded that Mumbai faces grave risks because of rising sea levels?

Now coming back, amid protests over the Eknath Shinde-led Maharashtra government's directive to move back the proposed Metro-3 car shed to Mumbai's Aarey forest from Kanjurmarg, Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Sunday said the opposition to the move by some "pseudo-environmentalists" could be "sponsored".

Assuring that no more trees will be cut for the project, the senior BJP leader also said that although the environmentalists have the right to express their opinion, they should not ignore the facts.

"There are some genuine environmental activists, while some are pseudo ones. Their opposition to the car shed is likely to be sponsored. Hence, they continue to oppose the construction of the car shed for the Metro-3 line," he told reporters on the premises of the Vidhan Bhavan in Mumbai, where a special two-day session of the state Legislative Assembly began on Sunday.

"There is no more need of cutting down trees. The trees that the state wanted to chop down have already been cut. With all due respect to the green activists, we will discuss the issues with them. But Metro train service is the right of Mumbai's citizens," he said.

From the National Green Tribunal to the Supreme Court, all the authorities have permitted the construction of the car shed. Almost 25 percent work is already done. If the construction is commenced at the Aarey site post-monsoon, it can take one year to complete, Mr. Fadnavis added.

"More importantly, the SC itself has observed in its order that the amount of carbon sequestration achieved by the Metro trains through their ferries in 80 days will be equivalent to the cumulative carbon sequestration done by the trees in their lifetime," he said, referring to the trees that have been chopped down to make space for the construction of the car shed.

Earlier in the day, environmental activists and some political parties, including the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) staged a protest at Aarey Colony, a green belt in suburban Goregaon, against the Metro-3 car shed proposal. Holding placards, the protesters raised slogans against the new government's proposal to shift the Metro-3 car shed project back to Mumbai's Aarey forest.