This unexpected piece of good news for the railways has come in the form of a proposal from the SSPPL, which is looking out to prove its mettle in providing free houses to slum dwellers. With its ambitions whittled down to a modest 25,000 free houses for slum dwellers as against the 40 lakh proposed earlier, the SSPPL has offered to give the railways the required tenements in constructions at Mankhurd on the harbour line.

Slums on the harbour line number to a precise 7,831 between Sewri and Mankhurd,the largest conglomeration being at Govandi. The CR, which runs 433 services on this line, ferrying around 12 lakh passengers daily, has been facing a critical situation since the encroachments, some of which brush against the running trains, have eaten into its punctuality. The speed limits of these trains are reduced to 30 per cent. Not surprisingly, the indicators on these stations are helplessly ineffective and trains run at a minimum of ten minutes headway.

MUTP II - an integrated traffic project for the city - includes railways as an important component and stresses on reducing the headway of trains in both the central and western railways. However, after considering the massive rehabilitation project that would have to be undertaken on the harbour line, which would also require additional funds, the WB mission, who were in Mumbai last September, decided to strike it off the priority list.``It was the last on our priorities,'' admits chief administrative officer of the Metropolitan Transport Project(MTP) of the railways, R S Varshneya.

The Indian Railways (IR) are equal partners with the WB on the railway project, which is expected to have an outlay of Rs 5,400 crore. The project cost has ballooned over the past five years because of bureaucratic delays and has reached a point where drastic price cutting had to be resorted to. Optimisation of the harbour line services and laying of a fifth line between CST and Kurla are two projects that were given the go-by in the first phase.

Apparently the WB team has convinced the IR that the second phase would begin in two years, which is why the SSPPL's rehabilitation programme is attractive to the railways.

``We have asked them to submit a detailed project report, which we are sure the railway ministry would clear easily,'' Varshneya adds. The entire rehabilitation scheme for the harbour line would have cost around Rs 289 crore under MUTP. Under the SSPPL, however, the railways have to spend a fraction of the cost. According to the official, Rs threelakh has been earmarked as the cost per tenement, of which Rs two lakh per tenement will be borne by the Prakalp, while the remaining one lakh will be divided equally between CIDCO and the railways. ``Since Navi Mumbai will stand to benefit the most due to the improved services, CIDCO has agreed to cost-sharing,'' the official told Express Newsline.