Mumbai: The seriousness of the new government over clearing pending infrastructure projects for Mumbai and Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) can be observed as Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has created a ‘war room’ in his office to expedite such projects. The war room has been monitoring the progress of projects to ensure their completion on time.
Senior bureaucrats and experts have been involved to create a war room to fast track top projects for Mumbai and MMR as well. The basic objective of the war room is to clear the bottlenecks in the projects resulting in delays.
Chief minister himself is heading the war room that was set up with the help of ‘Bombay First’ an NGO and global consultant McKinsey. Besides, two senior IAS officers Milind Mhaiskar and Pravin Pardeshi, both principal secretaries to the chief minister, are also monitoring issues that come up.
The team of the war room also comprises two officers on special duty (OSD) working round-the-clock that were personally chosen by the chief minister.
The responsibility of each of the OSDs is to coordinate with the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) and Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA). They also have subordinates called ‘associates’ to achieve specific targets.
“The war room was set up to clear up important infrastructure project that were held up for different reasons for years. We have to remove bottlenecks of the projects after doing a detailed study,” a senior officer working in the war room revealed.
Navi Mumbai International Airport, a proposed coastal road from Kandivali to Nariman Point, the Mumbai Trans Harbour Link (MTHL), Mumbai Metro and development of Mumbai Port Trust land are the projects on which war room has been working.
