Work on Eastern Express Highway-BKC connector to start next month

Madan said once the construction begins, the project will take two years to be completed. The 1.6-km connector will begin from the G Block of the Bandra Kurla Complex and ramp down at the Somaiya Ground in Chunabhatti off the Eastern Express Highway. “We are still talking to the Somaiya Trust. They have agreed to part with the land required for the project. However, we are yet to finalise the compensation amount,” he said.

Besides, there was also the issue of a cluster of about 50 shanties that will need to be razed and the occupants rehabilitated for the project. The MMRDA has written to the Dharavi Redevelopment Project Authority and the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) requesting the agencies to include the rehabilitation of these families in the overall revamp plan for Dharavi. The patch of land falls in Dharavi’s Sector 5, which is the first sector of the slum sprawl that the earlier Congress-NCP government had taken up for redevelopment.

At present, it takes over 30 minutes to travel from the Eastern Express Highway in Sion to the Bandra Kurla Complex. The elevated road, which will cut travel time between these points to 5 minutes, will go over the Mahim Nature Park, LBS Marg, cross railway lines half-a-kilometre north of Sion station and over the Chunabhatti railway crossing.

The MMRDA has applied for a clearance from the Central Railway for constructing over railway tracks and has also planned an internal connector at Chunabhatti to close the railway crossing there.
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