As Pune’s burgeoning population and commensurate increase in vehicles hurtles the city towards a traffic apocalypse, its denizens harbour great expectations from Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s Budget on Monday to inject much-needed funds into the Pune Metro Rail project.
After a number of revisions and false starts, the proposed project cost has shot up to Rs 11,522 crore, a humongous 45 per cent hike from its initial proposed cost of Rs 7,984 crore in 2009.
With the inclusion of Pune in the first roster of ‘Smart Cities’, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) is eagerly anticipating a significant share in Central infrastructure funds.
The first instance of fund transfusion to revive the project was the sanction of a modest Rs126.58 crore in last year’s budget. With the state government chipping in with a further Rs 174 crore in March, hopes have abounded that the Pune Metro project will finally take off.
According to the PMC, a massive outlay in the excess of Rs 3,500 crore over a 10-year period will be needed to meet Pune’s infrastructure targets, extrapolated on the basis of the city’s projected population by 2017.
Pune Mayor Dattatreya Dhankawade said, “We are awaiting the Union Finance Minister’s Budget… we hope that the Metro project gets its due share of funds and that all technical and legal obstacles are surmounted soon.”
In the last fiscal, Mr Jaitley had made a provision of Rs 30.32 crore for Pune under ‘Metro Projects’. The Pune Metro received another Rs 70.38 crore and Rs 25.88 crore under the heads ‘investment in public enterprise’ and ‘assistance for externally aided projects’ respectively.
Work on the project has been affected in turns owing to a lack of political consensus and protests by citizen groups against its allegedly 'flawed' plan forcing the PMC to revise it no less than four times.
Apart from the Pune Metro, the other feature in the Budget of great interest to the city is a much-anticipated follow-up to the Central government’s announcement of upgrading and overhauling the prestigious Film and Television Institute of India (FTII).
The functioning of the FTII had been paralyzed for over four months last year by a crippling 139-strike led by its students protesting against the Central government’s contentious appointment of TV actor and BJP member Gajendra Chauhan as the FTII chairperson.
Last year, in the midst of the strike, the government had announced a budget of Rs 80 crore over a five-year period to carry out a massive infrastructure and equipment upgrade of the institute with the aim of transforming it into a national centre of excellence.
Project work has been affected
due to lack of political consensus, protests by citizens
