Mumbai: A day before a PIL challenging the proposed reduction in the width of Walkeshwar Road scheduled to come up before Bombay High Court, local Malabar Hill MLA Mangal Prabhat Lodha met BMC commissioner Ashwini Bhide on Wednesday evening and urged her to review the controversial proposal.
In a letter dated Oct 14, the cabinet minister also requested Bhide to reconsider the past order to reduce the width of the road stretch from Teen Batti to Raj Bhavan’s lower gate, citing its implications for public convenience and traffic movement.
The road’s sanctioned width of 27.5 metres, as reflected in the 1967, 1991 and 2018 Development Plans (DP), was subsequently proposed to be reduced to 17 metres. The move has raised concerns over the implications of narrowing the road.
Lodha told TOI: “The BMC chief has been requested to see how best the civic administration can go back to the earlier road width that was specified in the DP instead of the change which was made.”
The current road at Walkeshwar, from Afghan Church to Teen Batti, measures 13.90 mt, and civic records of the past have shown the road length of 27.45 mt, which is also sanctioned vide the corporation resolution of July 13, 1967.
However, a deputy chief engineer of BMC, for traffic, in an Aug 2022 note, stated that implementing a 27.45-mt-wide road length is not feasible and hence the same was brought down to 17 metres.
Architect Jashwant Mehta, a local resident, said, “The speed at which civic body worked in reducing the planned road width is surprising to us as we kept going through the many documents pertaining to this matter. There was also not enough publicity that was given to this proposal with the advertisement published in a manner that residents would be bound to skip it. To add to this, neither of the elected representatives were aware of this development. The BMC house was also not formed then.”
