Six months after a cost escalation of over Rs 2,000 crore in the crucial Brihanmumbai Stormwater Drainage (BRIMSTOWAD) project was admitted by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC),the civic body has now decided to write to the Centre seeking additional funding. The Centre has already sanctioned Rs 1,000 crore to the project under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) as it had decided to fund the cost entirely when the project cost was pegged at Rs 1,200 crore after it was revived following the July 26,2005 deluge. Additional municipal commissioner Aseem Gupta said a detailed project report has been prepared. When we went to the Centre last time,they asked us to submit a detailed project report to support our claims for additional funding. We have prepared the same and we will now seek funding again. We hope to receive complete funding for the project but now that the project cost has swelled so much,we are sceptical if the Centre will fund it completely, he said. At present,work worth Rs 1,187 crore are in progress of which Rs 1,000 crore is Central Government funding and the remaining Rs 187 crore has been put in by the civic body. From costing Rs 616 crore when it was first proposed in 1993,the project cost has inflated to Rs 3,535 crore. The project that involves overhauling the century-old storm water drainage system across the city was shelved due to high costs and was not acted upon for 12 years after being proposed. The master plan submitted in 1993 suggested the replacement of old drains,widening of nullahs and increasing their capacity to take 50 mm rainfall per hour instead of the current capacity of 25 mm. Moreover,the run off coefficient was to be increased from 0.5 to 1. The Centre had decided to provide a 100 per cent grant to the project when it was revived from cold storage in 2005 following the deluge. The cost had already escalated to Rs 1,200 crore by then. While the BMCs official stand at present is that the project costs Rs 3,535 crore,officials have admitted that the even if the entire project is completed within the next five years,the total cost incurred will cross the Rs 5,000 crore mark. Recently,the BMC set itself a deadline of December 2013 to complete the project.
