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Rs 142 crore for 1.5-km road: BMC's fat cheque draws flak

The contract to construct the road in cement concrete (CC) was given to Ms RPS Infra. Officials attribute cost escalation to massive delay in acquiring space to clear a bottleneck in one location of the road. The road links Kurla (West) and Vidhyavihar (West) railway stations.

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It could be the costliest road to be constructed in the city. The BMC is spending a whopping Rs142 crore on 1.5-km long Vidhyavihar's Ramdev Peer road. And the opposition is crying foul, accusing the civic body of wasting tax payers' money.

The contract to construct the road in cement concrete (CC) was given to Ms RPS Infra. Officials attribute cost escalation to massive delay in acquiring space to clear a bottleneck in one location of the road. The road links Kurla (West) and Vidhyavihar (West) railway stations.

Though the road was marked in the city's Development Plan (DP), the plan never took off and it remained a mud road for years. The tender to concretise the road was first given in 2010 for Rs128 crore. However, a parch of land earmarked for the road was with the state transport corporation.

"The delay in getting the land was huge. It escalated the cost from Rs128 crore to Rs 142 crore," said a senior civic official. The escalation is around 13%.

The transport corporation land was finally acquired by the BMC in February this year. "The construction is happening at a record speed," said the official adding stormwater drains, sewage lines and work on Kurla car-shed nullah were also hampering the work earlier.

"The BMC has wasted tax payers' money by awarding the contract before they acquired land. There should be a probe into this. How can the civic body justify such a massive cost escalation which is so arbitrary," asked Devendra Amberkar, Congress leader in BMC.

Municipal commissioner Ajoy Mehta had recently cracked down on civic projects where there was a cost escalation. Amberkar demanded that the variation in this contract should also be checked.

"An additional Rs14 crore has also been allocated for other works like dumping debris outside the city limits, digging work, installing poles etc," the official pointed out.

Sandeep Deshpande, MNS leader in the BMC said, "It looks like the BMC thinks the city's roads are paved with gold. The BMC must take action against the officials concerned," Deshpande said.

BMC counters saying the contract cost was high since it also included rehabilitation of around 186 hutments as Project Affected Persons (PAPs). Besides, there were other works like installing drain lines, sewer lines and making arrangements for dumping the debris outside city limits. "That's the reason why we had spent Rs128 crore initially. Cement concrete roads are costly, especially in this case, since no pucca road existed there before," said an official.

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