Metro car shed will be built in Aarey Colony only! Shinde

Mumbai. After the formation of the new government in Maharashtra, the exercise to change the decisions taken in the old government has started. After the formation of the new government on Thursday, the state government directed the Advocate General that the metro car shed would be built in Aarey Colony, Mumbai. According to reports, the new government has ordered that the Maharashtra government’s side should be presented before the court in the matter of the construction of a metro car shed in Aarey Colony. In the cabinet held on Thursday, it was also decided that a special session of the state legislature would be convened in Mumbai on July 2 and 3. In the cabinet meeting held on Thursday, Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis directed the officials of the Urban Development Department to bring before the cabinet the proposal for construction of a car shed in Aarey.

Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis said that the 33-km-long underground Metro project between Colaba-Bandra-Seepz was stuck due to a legal dispute over the Kanjurmarg plot, where the previous Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government had decided to take the Metro. It was proposed to build a car shed. In the cabinet meeting, Fadnavis asked the bureaucrats whether the courts could be informed through the Advocate General that the car shed would be built in Aarey itself. In the meeting, CM Eknath Shinde supported this move. The move to shift the car shed from Aarey has been a major cause of controversy between the Shiv Sena and its former ally BJP.

On November 29, 2019, a day after taking over the reins of the state, Uddhav Thackeray overturned Fadnavis’s decision to build a car shed in Aarey. Many environmentalists in Mumbai opposed the construction of a car shed at Aarey, which is an extension of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park and is a habitat for leopards and other fauna. Environmentalists, who claimed that the car shed would damage large tracts of greenery in Mumbai, were supported by Aaditya Thackeray. Soon after the MVA government came to power, 804 acres of land in Aarey was declared a reserve forest.

There was a demand to build a car shed on alternate land in Kanjurmarg. However, the Bombay High Court in December 2020 stayed one of the biggest decisions of the Thackeray government by putting a stay on the construction of the shed at Kanjurmarg. The BJP had claimed that the decision to shift the car shed from Aarey was being taken to satisfy Thackeray’s arrogance and would delay the construction of the underground metro project by four years and increase its cost.