Peddar Rd residents demand third hearing

The Peddar Road Residents Association has written a letter to the chief minister, the collector and the environment department calling for another public hearing for the Peddar Road flyover.

The Peddar Road Residents Association has written a letter to the chief minister, the collector and the environment department calling for another public hearing for the Peddar Road flyover.

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The second public hearing for the Peddar Road flyover was held on July 18 but had to be adjourned after residents opposed to the project clashed with Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) workers who had come to support the project.

The PRRA has also filed an FIR at Tardeo police station against political party workers responsible for “hooliganism, shouting, manhandling of senior citizens, and disrupting Public Hearing on Pedder Road Viaduct”.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Mangal Prabhat Lodha is a co-complainant in the case, as Peddar Road comes under his constituency of Malabar Hill.

“We request you to kindly direct the MSRDC to make arrangements for a third Public Hearing, this time to be conducted by a representative of the MoEF, with adequate and proper security,” Veena Singhal, honourary secretary of PRRA said in the letter.

The letter also criticised the way the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) and the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) conducted the hearing.

The Peddar Road project, which could ease travel towards south Mumbai is one the city’s most delayed projects.

Conceived in 2000, the project has not taken off due to the opposition of local residents who want the government to look at other options that could be more environmentally friendly.

State officials claim that the residents are behaving irresponsibly and do not want the project to go ahead as it will disturb their privacy.

Both sides have taken up extreme positions and a constructive dialogue between the two has failed.