Colaba-Bandra-Seepz Metro: Layout tweaked after protests

“We did this by reducing the total land requirement by at least 600 square metres. The proposed underground station will be located within a garden plot of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation that is adjacent to Colaba Woods,” said Ashwini Bhide, managing director at MMRC.

The proposed Cuffe Parade station, 400 metres long and about 25 metres wide, will be completely underground, and small structures for the entry, exit and ventilation shaft will be above the ground.

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The MMRC had also been facing protests at Dadar, especially from leaders of the Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena. The corporation had proposed to acquire an old building at Dadar that would have affected eight families living in the structure. The MMRC needed the space for the ventilation shaft of the proposed Dadar underground Metro station. The corporation has, however, now revised the plan to exclude the building, but officials maintained that this was due to technical reasons and not political pressure.

Bhide said, “The building is going for redevelopment and there were technical difficulties in accommodating a ventilation shaft there. So, we decided to shift it elsewhere and exclude the structure from the project.” She maintained that the design tweaks have not caused any changes in alignment.

Earlier, MMRC had also altered the design of a key station, Marol Naka, to reduce the number of families to be displaced from the Chimatpada slum cluster in Marol, after residents opposed displacement and insisted on rehabilitation at the same site.

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