A second bridge over the Brahmani river seems to be a far cry now for the people of Sundargarh district as the contractor engaged for constructing the bridge has completely stopped working citing that the required land was yet to be provided.
The firm, which had been awarded the contract for construction of a six-lane bridge and a four-lane road, has stopped construction work due to non availability of land as per requirement.
Hyderabad-based GKC Infrastructure Limited had bagged the contract from Birmitrapur to Balughat(Rourkela) of 29.1 km construction of the six-lane Brahmani bridge and four -lane CC road at a cost of Rs 381.75 crore.
Sources said the issue of ‘Appointed Date’ is mandatory for NHAI to start work. After much delay, the Ministry of Environment and Forests had given the forest clearance in the first week of May this year and a fortnight later, the NHAI issued ‘Appointed Date’ to GKC to pave the way for construction activities. Work on the second Brahmani bridge, a part of NH-143 at Balughat, has been stopped since last one month.
According to sources, the contractor should have been provided 90 per cent land before construction of road and bridge but till now it has not happened.
Sources said, the land for approach road of bridge both at Raghunathpalli and Dandiapalli has not yet been provided to the GKC as some locals are refusing to hand over their land there.
A section of people in that locality had even moved the Orissa High Court and have succeeded in bringing a stay order.
The contractor GKC had done about seven piling on bridge but thereafter due to uncertainties in getting land, stopped construction activities. According to sources, GKC which had engaged about 80 people here incurred losses in crores of rupees due to non availability of land as per requirement.
“Since we have incurred huge losses because of non availability of required land, we have stopped construction work of bridge and road,” said Sajjad Alam, Site Engineer, GKC Infrastructure Ltd. “As soon as we will be provided the required land, we will commence our work.” Alam added.
“The State Government should take immediate steps and should provide us required land for further construction work by the contractor,” said Project Director, NHAI, Rourkela Saurav Chourasia.
Significantly, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced to complete the project at the earliest on April 1, 2015. Since then the bridge has been a big issue for political parties as they are trying to get mileage out of it but for the benefit of public, the second bridge on Brahmani river, has not yet come.
Significantly, the first bridge over the Brahmani river was constructed in the 1960s after the RSP was launched in 1955 in order to provide plant road connection. With heavy traffic on the bridge every day, the bridge is getting weaker. The bridge has already developed cracks and repairs have failed, leading to long hours of traffic problems every day.
Due to regular cracks on bridge and traffic congestion most of the time on present bridge, the need for another bridge on Brahmani arose in the 1990s.
In 2012, in Congress regime at centre, a budget of Rs 884 crore was sanctioned. Gammon Infrastructure Pvt Ltd(GIPL) (a sister concern of Gammon India Ltd.) was awarded the construction contract of Birmitrapur-Barkote four lane highway, including a bridge on river Brahmani on PPP mode for a whooping Rs1,000 crore and the company at that time, had started working for construction of second bridge.
The work of bridge had halted during that period due to problems regarding land acquisition. The residents of Balughat and Panposh opposed the project at that time and since the required land was not provided to GIPL during that time, the GIPL had quit the project after incurring huge losses.