Alignment of cemetery to be altered for Metro Bhavan project at Aarey

The alignment of the plot assigned to the trust United Christian Community Centre will be changed to accommodate Metro Bhavan, the headquarters of the city’s Metro

The alignment of the plot assigned to the trust United Christian Community Centre will be changed to accommodate Metro Bhavan, the headquarters of the city’s Metro rail network.

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In 2017, the Bombay high court (HC) had directed the state government to allot a 5,000 square-metre plot in Aarey Milk Colony for a Christian cemetery, in response to a 2009 application for a plot to build a cemetery near the Hindu and Muslim burial grounds in Goregaon. Christian Community Centre had said there was no public cemetery for Christians in the western suburbs, from Khar to Dahisar.

After community groups raised concerns about losing the assigned plot to Metro authorities, the trust clarified that the cemetery would be built in the same area.“The delay in the project is not because the Metro is taking over the land, but because instead of a horizontal plot parallel to the western express highway, we will now be given a vertical plot. We do not have any problem with that and we are in talks with concerned authorities to make the cemetery available as soon as possible,” said Joachim Colaco of United Christian Community Centre.