The Chief Minister met the MMPG delegation comprising its convenor and co-ordinator Dr P G Patankar and Dr M Q Dalvi one of the expatriate partners in the project, at Mantralaya on Friday in the presence of the Chief Secretary, Urban Development Secretary and senior MMRDA officials.

Senior State Government officials said that the sub-committee would take a decision on the proposal sometime this month and a separate rail corporation along the lines of the Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation (MRVC) would be set up if its was approved.

Though the 22 km-long underground railway running from the Backbay area in Colaba to Kurla was first conceived by the Indian railways way back in 1974, it was put on the back-burner due to itshigh costs.

But this metro project, for which an exhaustive feasibility study has already been prepared by the Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in 1997, is to be entirely privately funded.

"All that we want from the State Government now is to accept our report and facilitate the construction by providing us land for parking the 60 trains and for a workshop," an MMPG official told The Indian Express.

According to the MMPG, an unnamed private banking firm in the US has already offered financial support for the project to the tune of 3 billion dollars (about Rs 15,000 crore) at a lenient interest rate of 4 to 5 per cent.

The shortage of space on the existing overground stations could work against expansion in track capacity. With this in mind, the metro project suggests creating a separate rail corridor, tunnelling some 30 metres underground using deep drilling machines, as the only option to relieve Mumbai's congestion. The preliminary study has cleared tunnelling through the hard bed rock belowthe city as a safe option.

The project is to take seven years for execution, including two years on preparing the detailed project report and a five-year construction period.