The Maharashtra government will send a fresh proposal to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF) for acquisition of land for the Shinkansen bullet train.
The proposal, which will be forwarded before February 10, will include transfer of the 131 hectares of forest land in the State, and preparing the documentation for ‘right-of-way’ clearances for around 270 hectares of private land required for the project.
The decisions were taken at a meeting of a high-power committee headed by Chief Secretary D.K. Jain on Thursday. “We have also decided to bring into our team (hire) a new deputy collector and more manpower to speed up the acquisition. The new proposal will be forwarded to the MoEF before February 10,” a senior official said.
An estimated 312 villages in Gujarat and Maharashtra will have to give up land for the ₹1.08 lakh-crore project. Additionally, 7,974 plots belonging to the forest department and the Railways will have to be acquired in the two States.
On August 25, 2018, during a meeting with Mr. Jain, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had set a deadline of December 2018 for completing the land survey and acquisition. However, a report of the Palghar district collector last year had revealed that the National High Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL) did not have a time-bound schedule to meet the deadline.
The collector’s report had said that of the 108.059 km of land needed for the project, much is yet to be acquired through the government’s ‘private negotiation’ policy. Acquisition of the land — spread over 73 villages in Palghar, Vasai, Talasari, Dahanu, Wada and Shahapur villages — is being held up due to protests by local villagers, the collector had said.
The train, with a capacity of 750 passengers, will travel at a speed between 320 km and 350 km an hour, and is expected to reduce the travel time between Ahemdabad and Mumbai to three-and-a-half hours or less from the present eight. The project is expected to be completed in seven years.
