Mumbai, Dec 19 (NIE): At the ground-breaking ceremony of two Metro Rail corridors and a mass housing scheme on Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took potshots at the previous Congress-led government over the slow pace of work of infrastructure projects in Mumbai and in construction of houses for poor.
On Tuesday, Modi inaugurated two Metro corridors — Thane-Bhiwandi-Kalyan (Metro line-5) and Dahisar (E) to Mira-Bhayander (Metro line-9) — and a housing scheme comprising 89,771 houses in Navi Mumbai. He spoke at the ground breaking programme held in Kalyan (West), on the outskirts of Mumbai.
The Shiv Sena, whose president Uddhav Thackeray was not invited for the event, boycotted the event.
Addressing the gathering at Phadke ground in Kalyan, Modi said when the NDA government came to power in 2014, it focused on development projects for Mumbai. “The first Metro project in Mumbai was planned in 2006 but it got stuck for eight years. It is difficult to say where the project got stuck. By 2014, only 11-km Metro line had been commissioned, after eight years. But in the last four years, the current government has undertaken several Metro projects to create a Metro network and two more Metro projects have been added to it today. Between 2022 and 2024, 275 km of Metro network will be available in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region,” he added.
Modi further said that in the last four years, his government has built 1.25 crore houses, five times more than the number of houses built by the previous government, which had constructed only 25.20 lakh houses in its last four years in office. “The amount of work undertaken by our government in constructing houses for the poor would have taken two generations for the previous government,” the PM said, without naming Congress.
Taking a dig at the Congress for the infamous Adarsh housing society scam, the PM said, “The work undertaken by the BJP-led government is Adarsh (ideal) in the real sense.”
Modi further said that the culture, concern and pace of the current government is very different from that of the previous regime. “In Maharashtra, the government has provided assistance of Rs 2,000 crore for 85,000 houses constructed under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana,” he said, adding that the previous government would promise things but not deliver them.
Terming the CIDCO’s mass housing scheme as the biggest in the country, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said that the key aspect of the scheme is that it is planned as transit-oriented development. “Apart from the existing Metro Rail network, we will prepare detailed project reports for a Metro Rail to Taloja via Dombivli and Mira-Bhayander to Vasai and will give approval to it at the earliest,” he added.
At the event, Modi also gave allotment certificates to five beneficiaries, who have been declared as winners in CIDCO’s lottery draw held in October.