Navi Mumbai Metro: The story of a project that went off-track

Despite repeated promises and similar projects up and running in other cities, the citizens of Navi Mumbai are still waiting for their dream metro to commence operations, more than eight years after the original deadline. Officials now say that the wait might finally be over as the Phase 1 of Line 1(from Belapur to Pendhar) is expected to start operations this year.

The project, overseen by the City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO), received its formal approval in April 2010 and its foundation stone was laid by the then Chief Minister, Prithviraj Chavan, in May 2011. Phase 1 of the metro was originally scheduled to begin operations by 2014. But incessant delays caused by troubled contractors and bureaucratic hurdles have plagued the project since its inception.

This delay becomes even more stark when compared to other similar projects in the state, like the Nagpur Metro and Pune Metro. The Union Government approved the Nagpur Metro project in 2014 and the first line had already started to function by 2019. Although the Pune Metro project received its final approval in 2016, a stretch of 10.35 km is already operational in 2022.

Lax work by contractors has been pointed out as the primary reason for the delays in Navi Mumbai metro project by CIDCO officials. “The first consortium of contractors failed to complete the work till the fixed deadline and were terminated.” said Sanjay Nadgauda, Additional Chief Engineer at CIDCO.

Mahavir Infrastructure Limited, which was a part of the original consortium of contractors — San Jose-Mahavir-Supreme — has been blacklisted multiple times by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. The company was first blacklisted in 2013 for submitting fake challans to the civic authorities and for using substandard paver blocks at major junctions in a road connect.

Mahavir was again blacklisted for seven years in 2017 for shoddy work done in a 350 crore road project in Mumbai. Supreme Infrastructure India Limited was also blacklisted for its involvement in the same project.

Louis Berger, a consultant in the metro project, is facing multiple lawsuits for bribing officials in Assam and Goa to corner water management consultancy projects between 1998 and 2010. The company officials in 2015 admitted in a disclosure before a US Court that they and their consortium partners paid bribes worth 6.5 crore to ‘unnamed officials’ during this period.

A report by the Comptroller and Auditor General(CAG) tabled in the Maharashtra Assembly in 2020 revealed irregularities in the tender allocation process. Despite the original deadline of December 2013 for finishing the construction of Line 1, the report revealed that contracts for major works, like Rail System and approach viaduct works, were only given in 2014.

The report, further revealed that in at least 16 tenders with estimated tender cost of Rs 50 crore and above, advertisements were not published in leading newspapers at the national level, violating the laid down guidelines. Global tenders related to the project were also not published in any international publications.

Moreover, the report also says that in six contracts with an estimated cost of Rs 890.42 crore, the contractors who were awarded the work did not possess the minimum prescribed value of work experience. The report states that CIDCO did not recover compensation for delay amounting to Rs 185.97 crore, even though the delay was the fault of the contractors.

Sanjay Mukherjee, the Vice Chairman and Managing Director of CIDCO, however, denied the claims made in the CAG report. “The CAG report should not be taken at face-value. It was written with a poor understanding of the time value of money,” he said. Mukherjee also said that the corporation has submitted its own report to the Public Accounts Committee of the Parliament.

In 2017, facing pressure due to delays, CIDCO terminated its contract with San Jose-Mahavir-Supreme and appointed Prakash Constrowell Limited for the remaining works. According to the CAG, during this period, the cost of the project increased by 55% to Rs 3064 crore from an earlier estimate of 1694 crore.

After failing to construct any station for 32 months, Prakash Constrowell asked CIDCO to cancel their contract in 2020. “The second company we gave the contract to could not do any work due to a court case filed by the previous contractors and then the Covid-19 pandemic. So we had to cancel their contract as well and appoint a new company who is now working on the project,” said Nadgauda.

J Kumar Infra Projects Limited, the company that has been given the contract now to finish the remaining works, is also interestingly a company that has been blacklisted by the BMC. The company was blacklisted in 2016 for doing substandard work in a road construction and repair project.

In September 2021, two months before J Kumar was given the contract by CIDCO, a flyover in Bandra-Kurla-Complex in Mumbai being built by the firm, collapsed during construction.

Lack of accountability in CIDCO’s administrative process has been blamed as a reason for the various issues faced by the project. “The speed of work completion was greater in Nagpur and Pune because of the corporation present there as the overseeing authority. The lack of accountability by CIDCO was another reason for the slow progress in Navi Mumbai metro,” said a local journalist working with a leading Marathi daily who refused to be named.

Mukherjee agrees that the corporation had administrative issues earlier. “CIDCO was ill managed before and projects were taken up without financial closure. The corporation was under a financial crisis because of this,” he said. In 2021, CIDCO opened e-tenders for 31 plots and earned a revenue of Rs 600 crore to tackle its financial crisi. The civil servant also emphasised that the corporation has overcome its financial troubles under his tenure.

CIDCO roped in Maharashtra Metro Rail Corporation Limited (Maha Metro) to handle the operations and management of Line 1 in July 2021. Maha Metro is responsible for all metro projects in Maharashtra outside the Mumbai Metropolitan Area. “After Maha Metro stepped in, we have definitely seen improvement and the work nears completion as 50% of the construction work of Line 1 is complete,” said Nadgauda.

But the local citizenry are not fully convinced that the project is back on track. “I do not think that Maha Metro’s involvement in the project has speeded up the process of construction. It is just a trick by CIDCO to show that they are making some progress,” said K Kumar, President of the Conscious Citizens Forum, based in Navi Mumbai.

According to him, going by the current pace of construction, it will take at least one more year for Line 1 to be fully operational.