Railway minister PK Bansal on Tuesday announced two new surveys for two railway lines - the Kalyan-Kasara third line and the Naigaon-Juchandra cord line - but other than that, the budget has not made provisions for a single new project in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region.
In his pre-budget letter, CM Prithviraj Chavan had demanded for new infrastructure to accommodate the rapid development in MMR, such as a Thane-Bhiwandi corridor, quadrupling of Virar-Diva-Panvel line, new Panvel-Alibaug line, Panvel-Karjat line doubling, Panvel-Uran corridor, among other things, under the proposed Mumbai Urban Transport Project-III, estimated to cost Rs52,000 crore.
The budget has made no allocations for the various elevated corridors, though Bansal did mention them in the context of public-private-partnership projects.
"New railway line projects such as Virar-Dahanu quadrupling, CST-Panvel elevated corridor, Virar-Diva-Panvel quadrupling and Churchgate-Virar elevated corridor need to be prioritised," a railway official said.
For the ongoing MUTP-II, estimated to cost Rs 5,300 crore, there's a budgetary provision of Rs400 crore, which is lesser than last year's Rs 432 crore. An official said the total budgetary allocation for Mumbai is around Rs1,600 crore, but that includes the share of the stakeholders as well.