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• Mumbai With the state government yet to clarify its stand on the Peddar Road flyover days after the guardian minister for the island city unilaterally claimed that the project had been scrapped, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) has jumped into the fray, calling the government elitist and threatening to disrupt other flyover projects.MNS chief Raj Thackeray said at a press conference on Tuesday that Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan had indicated to him a final decision regarding the flyover had not been taken yet. Thackeray added that if the project was being abandoned owing to protests from local residents, then his party would insist that all future infrastructure projects be executed only after the express approval of the local residents is obtained.
• “What is so special about the residents of Peddar Road that their disapproval to the project should be taken into account,” asked Thackeray. “Land has been acquired and people displaced for all kinds of infrastructure projects, including skywalks that nobody uses.” He said he was all for development and believed Mumbai needed improved infrastructure. However, he added, “If the Peddar Road flyover is being scrapped following objections from local residents, then the government must engage in dialogue with local residents affected by all future projects.”
• Over the weekend, Nationalist Congress Party legislator and guardian minister for the island city, Jayant Patil, told a regional newspaper that the Peddar Road flyover, planned as a key project to solve the city’s worst bottleneck and as a dispersal system for traffic from the proposed Worli-Haji Ali Sea Link, would not be built. The project is being handled by the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation, which is controlled by the NCP. However, senior bureaucrats said they were unaware of such a decision.On Tuesday, a delegation of MNS legislators led by Mazgaon MLA Bala Nandgaonkar gave Chavan a letter terming the alleged decision unfortunate. “How many people’s opinions, votes and homes did the administration spare a thought for while building dams, flyovers, railways, roads, Metro railway lines and nuclear power projects,” asks the letter, signed by Nandgaonkar and MNS legislators Nitin Sardesai and Pravin Darekar.“Knowing that the Peddar Road flyover will benefit everybody, if the state government cancels this project only due to the fear that a handful of people’s lives will be affected... this would be a distinction between the rich and the poor,” the letter states. The party has threatened that it would ensure that if this flyover is not built, then “not a single flyover will be allowed to be constructed in this city”.

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