Indian Railways unit in talks with Mumbai authority to run India's first monorail

Public sector undertaking of Indian Railways, the Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation (MRVC) is now in talks with the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) for operating and maintaining the country’s first Monorail corridor between Chembur and Mahalaxmi after MMRDA has not been able to make it fully operational despite starting work on the same 10 years ago.

Ever since Monorail was made operational in 2014, frequent breakdowns and technical glitches have troubled MMRDA, and it has been in search of a new operator for Mumbai Monorail for more than a year now. Sanjay Khandare, Additional Metropolitan Commissioner, MMRDA confirmed that it has written to MRVC for operating and maintaining monorail.

R Khurana, Chairman and Managing Director, MRVC told DNA, “The talk of MRVC operating monorail is at an initial stage. The MMRDA had simply asked us, and there are certain terms and conditions that have to be looked into. However, prima facie it looks fine but we still need to check, and are in talks with MMRDA on the same.”

Earlier, MMRDA had conducted talks with Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), however, the talks did not yield any positive results. “We had not formally written to DMRC but had discussions that did not yield anything as DMRC did not show much interest,” said an MMRDA official.

The MMRDA had made the first phase of Monorail between Chembur and Wadala operational in 2014 but that has remained shut since more than six months now after a fire incident in November 2017. Following this, MMRDA decided to start off the first phase with the second phase between Wadala and Mahalaxmi in 2018 but it has not been able to do the same despite second phase got clearance citing lack of trains and spare parts.

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Meanwhile, MMRDA also is conducting talks with IL&FS that has quoted around Rs 2,000 crore for running Monorail for 10 years. The MMRDA had earlier this month, made the fourth attempt at finding an operator for Mumbai Monorail since January 2017 after which two bidders had shown interest. In its fourth attempt, IL&FS quoted Rs 2,000 crore for operating Monorail for 10 years and Reliance Infrastructure has quoted Rs 6,408 crore against the estimation of MMRDA being Rs 1,000 crore.

By Mehul R Thakkar, DNA