30 buildings in Girgaum make way for Colaba-Seepz metro-3 corridor

Girgaum’s two-storey Kranti Nagar chawls, once home to 108 families, stand vacant, waiting to be bulldozed for the underground Colaba-Seepz Metro 3 corridor, cutting through the heart of the city. Nearby, residents of the three-storey Annapurna Niwas are vacating houses. Their structure is the next and last on the list of 30 buildings making way for the Metro route along the crammed 50ft JagannathShankerSheth (JSS) Road in the Girgaum-Kalbadevi belt. The Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation (MMRC), which is executing the project, has succeeded in convincing locals to surrender their almost century-old houses so that the corridor can pass through the underbelly of one of the city’s oldest neighbourhoods. Kalbadevi and Girgaon stations will come up on this stretch. Perhaps, this is the government’s biggest-ever rehabilitation project involving legal middle-class tenants for an urban infrastructure project.