Mumbai, July 16 MMRDA is waiting for Railways to finalise Churchgate-Virar elevated tracks proposal After a series of flip-flops on how to go about the first phase of the Metro rail in the city, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) has now put the third route, to run from Colaba to Bandra, on hold indefinitely. The reason: The route would duplicate the proposed elevated railway along the existing Churchgate-Virar line. "We have to wait and see whether the elevated route materialises. We don't want to duplicate a parallel line which will cost around Rs 12,000 crore,' said Metropolitan Commissioner Ratnakar Gaikwad. In the meantime, according to the chief of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) which is the nodal agency for executing the Metro Rail masterplan for the city, the government may invest in "other, smaller corridors'. In effect, this means the planned Metro Rail corridor from Colaba in south Mumbai to the north-western suburb of Bandra will now be considered only after the Ministry of Railways gives a final and clear picture on its ambitious proposal for a 60-km elevated rail corridor from Churchgate to Virar. Still at a very nascent stage, a pre-feasibility report on the elevated rail is still awaited. Planned as the third route in the first phase of the Metro Rail project for the financial capital, the 20-km route from Colaba to Bandra was earlier already mired in indecision after bureaucrats pointed out that the immense cost could deter private players from being interested. Mostly an underground route, the Colaba-Bandra Metro Rail line was part of the government's Metro Rail masterplan for the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. In the meantime, the MMRDA, which is in the tendering process for the second corridor