10 years, Rs 1,000 crore, zero progress: Commuters demand action on Kalyan growth plan

THANE: A day after the train-fall incident near Mumbra killed four passengers and injured nine, passengers living in Kalyan-Dombivli and beyond are demanding that the govt implement the growth centre that the MMRDA had planned in 10 villages of Kalyan, similar to Mumbai's BKC.

Such a centre would mean that people would not have to travel to Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and Thane for jobs, resulting in a reduction in local train passengers.Some passengers believe that the government should prioritise the ongoing infrastructure projects connecting Kalyan-Dombivli to Thane, Mumbai and Navi Mumbai, which would also reduce the number of people travelling by train.A large number of people from Kalyan-Dombivli work in IT companies in Navi Mumbai.

Most of them used to travel in buses, but due to the Metro Line 12 (Kalyan-Taloja metro work), this journey takes two hours instead of 40 minutes. As a result, they now travel by train, first going to Thane from Kalyan-Dombivli and then to Navi Mumbai, adding to the peak-hour crowd.Although MMRDA is working fast on this Metro Line 12, the work on Metro 5 connecting Kalyan to Thane has not yet started between Kalyan and Bhiwandi.

The delay in work on the Mumbai-Nashik highway, particularly from Thane to Kalyan-Bhiwandi Phata, has also led many people to prefer trains instead of private cars, increasing the crowd in trains.In 2015, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis decided to develop 10 villages of Kalyan as a growth centre on the lines of BKC, stating that people from these cities would not have to travel to Mumbai and Thane for jobs. After this, MMRDA reserved 1,089 hectares of land in these 10 villages for the growth centre.

In 2018, the govt sanctioned Rs 1,000 crore for it, but no work has started yet.Rupesh Raut, a resident of Dombivli who works in an IT company in Vikhroli, said, "The govt should prioritise the work of building a growth centre in Kalyan so that the lives of people like us, who risk our lives and travel by local train every day, will be saved. If we get jobs near us, it will reduce the crowd in trains."Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Dipesh Mhatre from Dombivli said that today Kalyan-Dombivli, Ambernath and Badlapur, where most people are employed in Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai, have become residential hubs where lakhs of people live.Railway activist Lata Argade said the govt now needs to take a decision on changing the working hours of govt and private sector offices in Mumbai.