The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) officially withdrew the tender for the controversial underground parking project at Patwardhan Park on Tuesday, September 11. This comes in response to months of protests and legal battles by the residents of Bandra and Khar.
The additional municipal commissioner signed the document to cancel the tender. The BMC had announced the project in March 2023, proposing a parking lot with 288 spaces underneath Patwardhan Park. Despite protests from residents, the tender process continued.
By June 2023, two local activists, Alan Abraham and Zoru Bhathena, had even filed a public interest litigation (PIL), arguing that the project would damage the park unnecessarily. The PIL stated that the area already had sufficient parking. According to the petitioners, a survey showed that 500 authorised parking spaces existed within 150 meters of the park, and 400 of them were empty.
The PIL claimed that the BMC ignored this data. Then, the project at Patwardhan Park remained in dispute for more than a year. However, a similar project at Pushpa Narsee Park in Juhu was quickly abandoned after local complaints.
The deadline for the project was also extended several times. Later, MLA Ashish Shelar had also hinted that the Patwardhan Park project might be dropped during an Independence Day event on August 15. In a report by FPJ, Bhathena criticised the delays, stating that the BMC had continued to push the tender forward despite ongoing opposition. The local community celebrated this victory.
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