The ambitious and much-awaited Eastern Peripheral Expressway will now be completed in the next 400 days with the work, which was put in abeyance due to land acquisition problems in Palwal area of Haryana, starting early this week.
According to a Road Ministry official, work on the Rs 5,763-crore expressway began after redress of the land acquisition issues.
A NHAI official said the Chief Secretaries of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana have again been requested to ensure that there is no obstruction to NHAI’s work. The project falls in Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh and on completion will help in decongesting the traffic in the national Capital.
The official said that farmers are now happily handing over the land to NHAI in Palwal district and NHAI Chairman Raghav Chandra has personally complimented the district administration for his support in resolving farmer issues. “The work of Eastern Peripheral Expressway, which was held up due to land acquisition problems has kick-started on the Palwal side after the release of enhanced compensation by the NHAI as awarded by the Arbitral Tribunal,” said the official.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had laid the foundation stone of the 135-km-long Eastern Peripheral Expressway in November last year along with Rs 2,274 crore Western Peripheral Expressway and a eight-laning project worth Rs 2,129 crore.
In a meeting with all five contractors of the project, NHAI Chairman asked to chalk out the plan ahead with “military-precision so as to complete the project in 400 days as desired by the Prime Minister”.
“It is now likely that the problems in other areas will also be resolved very soon. Further, to monitor the project on real time basis, a web-based ‘app’ has been developed and the photos of the running work will be uploaded which can be viewed for monitoring by NHAI headquarters,” it said.
According to information, NHAI has transferred Rs 1,530 crore for land compensation and of this Rs 1,335 crore has already been paid to people whose land were acquired. The project work has been divided into six packages — 21-km stretch in Sonepat-Baghpat, 24.5-km stretch in Baghpat-Ghaziabad, 24.5-km stretch in Ghaziabad-GB Nagar, 22-km stretch in GN Nagar, 21-km stretch in GN Nagar-Faridabad and 22-km stretch in Faridabad-Palwal.