Mumbai: Mumbai has its new sea link, but its inauguration was a very political affair. Congress president Sonia Gandhi, flanked by top Congress and NCP leaders, was the first user of the Bandra-Worli Sea Link. She swiped her card while driving with her cavalcade and went for a VIP drive.
And at a rally afterwards, former Congress rebel and NCP chief Sharad Pawar proposed to christen the bridge after Rajiv Gandhi.
"The bridge should be named after Rajiv Gandhi," Pawar said.
This was no ordinary launch of an infrastructure project. It looked almost like the soft launch of an election campaign and an opportunity for the Congress-NCP to score political points with the assembly elections just a few months away.
The politics has cast a brief cloud over the opening of this marvel of homegrown engineering -- one which was meant to ease traffic on Mumbai's worst gridlock. But then, politics has always dogged the bridge, which went five years over schedule and has about Rs 1,000 crore overdue.
Was it worth the wait? And the price? Mumbai will know when the bridge is opened up at the stroke of midnight.