PM inaugurates the Mumbai Trans Harbour Link project.

The Mumbai Trans Harbour Link (MTHL), perhaps the most anticipated infrastructure project in the city, is set to open for regular traffic this Saturday, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated India’s longest sea bridge on Friday. 

Named the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Sewri-Nhava Sheva Atal Setu, the 21.8 km-long, six-lane engineering marvel, of which 16.5 km is in the sea, has been built at a cost of Rs 17,840 crore, and will cut the distance between the Mumbai island city and its satellite city Navi Mumbai shorter. 

“The inauguration of Atal Setu exemplifies India’s infrastructural prowess and underscores the country’s trajectory toward a ‘Viksit Bharat’,” Modi after inaugurating the bridge. He arrived at the programme in Navi Mumbai in the evening, after his convoy drove across the sea bridge – the foundation stone of which the PM had laid around seven years ago.  

The prime minister also laid foundation stones for other development projects in the state worth more than Rs 12,700 crore. “…a budget of Rs 44 trillion for infrastructure has been presented in the 10 years of the present government. In Maharashtra alone, the central government has either completed infrastructure projects worth about Rs 8 trillion or work on them is in progress,” he said. 

The MTHL project is one of the four main infrastructure projects in the city that are likely to become operational this year — an election year for both country and Maharashtra.  

The other three, along with MTHL, are estimated to cost upwards of Rs 84,000 crore.

The MTHL project — 80 per cent of which has been funded through a debt from Japan International Cooperation Agency, where the MMRDA is the borrower – is expected to spur further economic development in Mumbai and Navi Mumbai. The MMRDA, or Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority, is the nodal agency for the project.

Sanjay Mukherjee, the Metropolitan Commissioner of MMRDA, anticipates “a consistent uprising in business opportunities and economic growth in the surrounding regions” as one of the many positive outcomes of the project.

“The Atal Setu will be a huge contributor to the steady escalation of the MMR’s humongous share in our nation’s GDP in the forthcoming years,” he said.

Sanjay Sethi, chairperson for Jawaharlal Nehru Port Agency (JNPA), located in Navi Mumbai, said: “The increased connectivity, especially in the JNPA vicinity, will open up new trade opportunities, attracting investments in warehousing and logistics infrastructure, further boosting JNPA SEZ’s economy.”

The MTHL project — first conceived in the 1970s and finally awarded in 2017 – was to be completed in the early part of 2022. However, its execution saw delays, partly because of pandemic-related supply chain woes.