MVA govt may go slow on hyperloop project: Ajit Pawar

NEW DELHI: Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar on Friday signalled that his government could go slow on the ₹70,000-crore hyperloop project which aims to cut down the commute time between the state’s two cities that are 140km apart — Mumbai and Pune — to 25 minutes.

Pawar, who is the state’s finance minister, expressed reservations about the project after a review meeting on Friday. Former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis had last year declared that Maharashtra would create the first hyperloop transport system in the world. He had also given the project the status of a “basic infrastructure project” in August last year to make it easier to acquire land. But the land acquisition process has been facing resistance from farmers. The first stage is a 11.8-km demonstration track between Gahunje and Urse village alongside the Pune-mumbai expressway on Pune’s outskirts.

“Let it happen somewhere else. Let it become successful for at least a 10-km distance somewhere abroad,” Ajit Pawar told reporters, according to news agency Press Trust of India.

That didn’t mean, he clarified, he wanted it scrapped. “We do not have the capacity to experiment with Hyperloop. We will concentrate on other modes of transport and in the meantime, if that technology develops more with successful trials abroad, we can think about it,” he said.

The line echoes the many statements that Ajit Pawar and other Congress leaders such as Prithviraj Chavan had made in the run-up to the elections.