COMMENTARY
INTERVIEWS
SPECIALS
CHAT
ARCHIVES

MoU for Bombay rail board to be signed tomorrow

The much-awaited memorandum of understanding for the setting up of a Mumbai (Bombay) Railway Vikas Corporation will be signed between the railway ministry and the Maharashtra government tomorrow.

The MoU will be signed by Railway Minister Nitish Kumar and Maharashtra chief minister Manohar Joshi in Bombay. Union Minister of State for Railways Ram Naik and Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde will be present on the occasion, apart from top state government and railway ministry officials.

The corporation will execute projects of the World Bank-sponsored Mumbai (Bombay) Urban Transport Project-phase II, meant to improve the suburban transport system, considered the lifeline of the sprawling city of over 14 million.

Initially, the corporation will take up 12 priority projects on the suburban sections of Central and Western Railways, both of which snake through Bombay.

Principal Secretary of the state urban department K Nalinakshan said that the corporation is being set up with an initial capital of Rs 250 million. While Indian Railway will provide 51 of the equity base, the state government will invest 49 per cent of the amount.

The MRVC will have 11 members on its board, who will be responsible for executing the railway projects in Bombay city and the suburban section. The construction of overhead bridges will be done by the public works department of the Maharashtra government. Soon after coming into effect, the corporation is expected to undertake 12 projects.

The autonomous body will function on both Central and Western Railways as a corporation and will basically work for improving the suburban railway system. Thus far, the suburban railways, which carry five million passengers daily, were run as separate units under the Central Railway and the Western Railway respectively. Both were under the government of India.

The Rs 64.3 billion MUTP-II project is meant to ease the massive traffic congestion along the metropolis. A significant amount of the project is for rail development and the World Bank had earlier set the deadline of April 1999 for setting up of the corporation to avail the loan.

Since the last two years, the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance government in the state has been demanding a corporation to take care of projects for improving the rail services in the suburban section. Moreover, the World Bank had reportedly declined to give loans for the MUTP-II projects until and unless a corporation was formed.

In April this year, a senior World Bank official, who was in the country to review the World Bank projects, held a talk with Joshi, state chief secretary P Subramanayam and other senior officials about the loan for the projects.

It may be recalled that the BJP has taken up the issue of suburban transport of this metropolis, and was a part of their agenda to improve the suburban system.

Naik, who is now the minister of state for railway, had earlier taken up the matter with respective government and railway officials. Joshi and Munde had held several founds of talks with former prime minister I K Gujral and former railway minister Ram Vilas Paswan regarding the setting up of the corporation and the Union cabinet had granted the approval last year.

But with the collapse of the United Front government and the subsequent elections, a formal decision could not be taken. After the BJP-led coalition government took over, it decided to sign the MoU with the state government at the earliest.

EARLIER REPORT:
Bombay rail corporation to be set up

UNI