During his inspection visit of highway broadening from Delhi to Haridwar, Minister of Road transport and Highways for India Nitin Gadkari announced that proposal for road projects worth `25,000 crores had been made for the State of Uttarakhand which would begin by the end of December month. When asked about the slow pace of Ardh Kumbh Mela projects in the holy city, the Minister said he would study the reason of delay for sure.

Proposals announced by the Minister include Delhi to Meerut distance can be covered in 45 minutes and distance from Meerut to Haridwar can be covered in 2 hours by the construction of the new highway.

For the char dhams Badrinath, Kedarnath, Yamunotri and Gangotri, new roads worth `11000 crores shall be built. A complete programme is chalked out through which traffic would never get blocked on these roads. These projects would commence before June next year. Tender inviting procedure was already underway said the Minister. Till December people would be able to go to Mansarovar via Uttarakhand route. For the process of exploding mountains, new machinery was being imported from foreign countries  which can break through upto 10 metres in a mountain to make the way and would be handed over to Border Roads Organisation, said the Minister.

The Minister expressed happiness over clearance of 75 to 80 percent of problems  related to bankers, contractor and encroachments in the construction of Access controlled highway, easterly westerly bypass which is the country’s first national highway of its kind. The ground reality of Haridwar– In the interval of past five years from Kumbh Mela of 2010 to Ardh Kumbh mela of 2016, only 36 percent of the highway broadening work has been accomplished. The work of National Highway NH-58 broadening was given to Era Infra Engineering ltd. company of Noida by National Highway Authority of India and the task was to be completed before Ardh Kumbh mela of 2016. The project was scheduled to be run in Private Partnership (PPP) mode. The whole task was divided into two parts and started simultaneously. In the first fraction of work, the 80 km stretch of broadening from Muzaffarnagar to Haridwar worth 954 crores and the second part included  40 km stretch of Haridwar to Dehradun broadening worth Rs440 crores.

The deadlines of completion of work has been extending ever since the work commenced. Initially the broadening work was targeted to be completed before 2013 but due to lack of funds no work it was interrupted. The further reviewing of the whole work the deadline was extended to December 2015.

Unfortunately it could not be accomplished. Now the final deadline has been extended to June 2016 but the snail pace of works makes it an unachievable target. Doubts remain if the works can be accomplished on which the project director of NHAI Narendra Singh says, “36 percent work of highway broadening has been completed till date. Rest of the work shall be completed soon.”

Pending works :

· 2200 electricity poles and 100 transformers lining the national Highway need to be shifted

· land transfer cases in many villages of  Haridwar district are pending due to variation in compensation rates.