Congress Demands Cancellation of RBI Nariman Point Deal, Threatens Legal Action

MUMBAI: The Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Limited (MMRCL)’s decision to sell a 4.16-acre plot at Nariman Point to the Reserve Bank of India for ₹3,472 crore has sparked a major controversy. The Congress party has demanded that the deal be cancelled, alleging that the state government went back on its promise to reinstate the political party offices that were on the plot before the land was taken over for the Metro 3 project. The party has also accused the deal of leading to a loss of around ₹1,800 crore for MMRCL, as the prime property was sold without floating tenders.

The plot previously housed the offices of several political parties, including the Congress, the undivided Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the undivided Shiv Sena, Samajwadi Party, and Republican Party of India among others. In 2015, all the offices were shifted to Ballard Estate and the plot was vacated to facilitate the construction of the Vidhan Bhavan metro station.

Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant said that Gandhi Bhavan, the Congress office, had existed on the plot for many decades along with the offices of the other parties. “The state, in a Government Resolution (GR), had directed the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) and MMRCL to construct new office buildings on the same plot and hand them over to the political parties,” he said. The GR was issued on October 21, 2015, a copy of which was shared by Sawant with HT.

“The then chief minister Devendra Fadnavis had also written to the Congress, asking us to temporarily vacate the office for the metro project on December 02, 2016. Now, the government has reneged on that promise. Without any discussion with the Congress, the land was sold to the RBI and the deal was registered on September 5,” said Sawant, calling the government’s action “arrogant, arbitrary, and criminal in nature”.

Demanding that the deal be cancelled, Sawant said that the market value of the plot was around ₹5,200 crore, but the deal was struck at ₹3,472 crore, resulting in a loss of ₹1,800 crore to the exchequer. The Congress vice-president Adv Ganesh Patil, meanwhile, shared copies of the correspondence with the government. He also warned of approaching the court if the government failed to fulfil its promise.

When contacted, MMRCL clarified that the land in question, known as the Vidhan Bhavan Barracks plot, had always been government land, and certain government offices and some political party offices were housed there on a purely temporary basis in barrack structures.

“As per Government Resolution dated 23rd March 2023, the State Government transferred this land for sale in order to raise funds for the capital works of the Mumbai Metro-3 Project. The Government had initially envisaged rehabilitation space for displaced offices. In the final transaction, the Reserve Bank of India purchased the land by paying the full negotiated value along with an additional amount in lieu of rehabilitation. This additional amount has been deposited with MMRC and will be duly transferred to the State Government to relocate the concerned offices as per State policy and administrative requirements. MMRC reiterates that the transaction is a transparent Government-approved process aimed at mobilising resources for Mumbai’s critical Metro infrastructure,” said the reply.