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Over 24,000 mangroves to be felled for Virar-Dahanu railway line expansion
The Mumbai Railway Vikas Corporation (MRVC) will divert 26
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The Mumbai Railway Vikas Corporation (MRVC) will divert 26.5 hectares of forest land across 11 villages in Palghar district to quadruple the existing railway line between Virar and Dahanu stations on the Western Railway (WR).
The project will lead to the felling of 25,438 trees, including 24,302 mangroves, official documents show. To offset the loss, compensatory afforestation has been proposed on 54 hectares of degraded land in three nearby villages in the district.
The proposal was given a go-ahead in the last meeting of the Union environment ministry’s regional empowered committee in Nagpur. The project is part of phase III of Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP-III), and involves the laying of third and fourth railway lines parallel to, and on the west of the existing double line corridor between Virar and Dahanu, for a distance of about 63 km.
As the existing double line corridor is oversaturated, it is not possible to increase the number of suburban services in this section, an official from the MRVC said on the condition of anonymity.
Therefore, it was decided to lay an additional two lines to enable a separate corridor for suburban services, as has been done for the Churchgate-Virar section of the WR. The lines are being laid on the western side of the existing lines, as the Centre’s dedicated freight corridor project is planned on the eastern side.
The cabinet committee on economic affairs, chaired by the Prime Minister, had approved phase-IIIA of MUTP in April 2020 to improve the connectivity of mass rapid transport between Mumbai, Thane, Palghar and Raigad districts.
The MRVC has also sought permission from the state forest department to divert 12.7 hectares of mangrove forests across Mumbai (suburban), Thane, and Dahanu districts to make way for the fifth and sixth railway lines between Borivali and Virar on the WR, also being executed under MUTP-III.
Zoru Bhatena, a city-based environmentalist, said the loss of mangroves has to be seen in the context of the project’s benefits. “The railways are an important mode of public infrastructure. There will be significant benefits by expanding services on one of the world’s most congested and accident-prone train systems. But before clearance is granted, there needs to be a publicly available plan for transplantation and compensatory afforestation which can later be verified on the ground by citizens,” he said.
The phase-III of MUTP also involves construction of a 55-km fast elevated corridor between Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus and Panvel on the Harbour Line, a new suburban railway corridor of 70 km connecting Panvel to Virar, extension of the Harbour Line between Borivali and Goregaon (7 km), a fourth railway line between Kalyan and Asangaon (32 km), and a third and fourth railway line between Kalyan and Badlapur (14 km). The entire project is being executed at a cost of ₹54,777 crore, borne equally by the state government and the Union ministry of railways.
