mid-day had, in February 2021, highlighted how the Belapur-Seawoods Uran suburban railway project, being implemented jointly by Central Railway and the City Industrial Development Corporation Limited (CIDCO), had been categorised as the most delayed railway project in Maharashtra with a “time run over of 216 months that is 18 years” as per Union government’s infrastructure and project monitoring division of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.

The project was approved in March 1996 with an original deadline of March 2004 and a project cost of Rs 495.44 crore. The cost has since risen to R2,980.41 crore, of which Rs 1,768.25 has been spent so far. The project is being done on a cost sharing basis with the state government’s CIDCO. One-third of the project cost is borne by Railways and two-thirds by CIDCO. The new line connects the existing harbour line at two points. One arm goes to Nerul and the other to Belapur.