A day after the contract for civil work on the first line of Mumbai Metro was awarded, a senior government official said on Wednesday that work on the second line of the project is likely to begin by June.
"We are presently carrying out technical evaluations and should invite bids after that," Metropolitan Commissioner of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority Ratnakar Gaikwad said.
There was a problem regarding a plot which was to be used as a car depot for the project, since it had been encroached upon, the city's civic body had been asked to clear the encroachers, Gaikwad said.
The second line of the metro project, estimated to cost Rs 6,000 crore (Rs 60 billion), is to be built between western suburb Charkop and eastern Mankhurd.
The MMRDA is also considering building the third line between Colaba in South Mumbai and suburban Bandra without any private participation since the Viability Gap Funding for the project is very high, he added.
"The cost of the corridor is estimated at about Rs 12,000 crore (Rs 120 billion) which would make the VGF very high at about Rs 8,800 crore (Rs 88 billion). This is not ideally suited to the Private-Public Partnership model and we will need to consider the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation model where the state incurs the full cost of the project," the official said.
A similar scheme was also being looked for the Charkop-Mankhurd metro corridor also, he said.
DMRC's head E Sreedharan would also be coming to the city to meet the Chief Minister regarding the two metro corridors, Gaikwad said, adding that the DMRC was a consultant to the entire Mumbai Metro Rail project.
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