The new government in Maharashtra in which the Bharatiya Janata Party is a partner is expected to finally fast-track Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s signature high-speed rail corridor project between Ahmedabad and Mumbai. The focus is on acquiring about 150 hectares of pending land in Maharashtra.
Along with that, the new government will also be working closely with the Centre to begin activity on the already acquired land in the state, like work has begun on the entire 352 km stretch located in Gujarat as well as Dadra and Nagar Haveli.
“The deadline of the project got pushed back at least three years from 2023 to the end of 2026 due to the attitude of the Uddhav Thackeray government since 2019. So much so that the Prime Minister had last instructed that the high-speed corridor be operationalised in Gujarat first, without waiting for Maharashtra. Now, we hope work will get fast-tracked on the entire stretch,” a senior government official closely associated with the project told News18.
The Prime Minister in a PRAGATI review meeting in November 2020 had asked the Uddhav Thackeray government to acquire and hand over all the land required for the project by April 30, 2021. But that was to no avail.
The delays in Maharashtra
The Thackeray government had termed the project a “vanity one” and said it was not its priority, saying there was already good rail connectivity between Mumbai and Ahmedabad and said such a high-speed rail corridor would in fact be more beneficial between Mumbai and Nagpur. This led to delays in land acquisition in Maharashtra.
Sample this: the total project requires 1,396 hectares of land out of which about 298 hectares is in Maharashtra. The rest of the land required in Gujarat (954 hectares) and D&N Haveli (8 hectares) has already been acquired by last year and work has begun on the entire stretch, including the station designs. The process has limped in Maharashtra.
Till this April, only 150 hectares out of the required 298 hectares had been acquired in Maharashtra. This despite the then Devendra Fadnavis government in the state assuring the Prime Minister in a PRAGATI review meeting in 2018 that all land required for the project would be acquired by 2019. But the state government changed in 2019.
Last August, the Centre told Parliament that it had no revised deadline for the completion of the project and blamed the inordinate delay on the government of Maharashtra. “The revised timeline for completion of the project can be fixed after the acquisition of complete land in Maharashtra,” the government had informed Parliament.
The Palghar challenge
About 108 km of alignment of the project passes through Palghar where there is considerable public resistance in villages to the land acquisition. The National High-Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL) last year decided to appoint an agency or a consultant for “communication management and facilitation in land acquisition for Palghar district” where nine villages have been opposing giving up their land for the project.
The agency will communicate details of the project and “its offering or benefits from the government to the stakeholders and communicate back to NHSRCL the pain points or responses of the stakeholders”. The agency will also assist NHSRCL and the Maharashtra government in facilitating the various activities in land acquisition for the project.
This will involve taking consent of gram sabhas in the nine villages in question that “are to be persistently persuaded and convinced to agree for the project and to give consent for the project”, the document says. All nine villages come under the Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas Act.
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