Minister conducts State-wise review of various projects
Upset with the tardy pace of work in road projects across the country, Minister of Road Transport, Highways and Shipping Nitin Gadkari on Monday asked for urgent action to overcome the prolonged delays hounding the sector.
Gadkari conducted a state-wise review of the national highways projects, analysed targets and achievements of the projects. There are about 45-50 projects that are behind schedule across India.
The Minister studied the bottlenecks and the status of each of these projects. “In all, about 10-15 are in a bad shape where work has been stopped and there’s little possibility of any progress. Minister has asked us to provide solution at the earliest for the projects,” official said.
“The Minister warned some of the concessionaires managing highway projects in some States that they would not be allowed to charge toll unless the highway are fully operational. He also said that the contractors failing to meet deadline may face serious consequences,” he said.
The national highways in the disaster-hit Uttarakhand came in for a special review. “The Minister expressed his displeasure over the progress in restoring and repairing roads in these vital border areas which also connect pilgrimage centres in the hill region,” said an official.
The Minister, who has also sent a team of officials to Uttarakhand earlier this week to oversee the work, ordered a performance audit of the Border Road Organisation (BRO) which is responsible for building and maintaining strategic roads in this area. He suggested a special session to review the projects being handled by the BRO.
Gadkari also said that there was a tearing need for regular monitoring of the progress in all prominent highway projects including Delhi-Jaipur, Delhi-Dehradun, Delhi-Chandigarh, Delhi-Punjab, and highways in Uttar Pradesh, J&K, Haryana, Himachal, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Daman & Diu.
Gadkari was briefed about the bottlenecks in the way of speedy completion of the highways which included problems relating to land acquisition, environmental and forest department clearances and cash crunch facing the contractors.
During the day-long review meetings, Gadkari laid emphasis on road safety measures and asked the representatives of different States to take short-term, medium-term and long-term measures to remove already identified black spots which were notorious as death traps. The Government has in the past announced its intention of reducing road deaths by 50 per cent in the next five years.