The national highways and bridges in the insurgency ridden districts of Bastar division are in for a major overhaul after a gap of many years.
Thanks to PWD Minister Rajesh Munat’s two-day whirlwind tour of Bastar division where he expressed extreme displeasure over the bad condition of highways and other key infrastructure while carrying out personal inspection of the assets.
Munat made an elaborate inspection of highways passing through Jagdalpur and Sukma districts, while even issuing directives to suspend the Executive Engineer of Jagdalpur division’s National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) JP Tigga for not being present in a departmental review meeting chaired by him besides even not being present during inspections carried out by him of the highways and the ‘Gaurav Path’ under construction in Sukma, top officials sources here informed.
At the same time, the Minister also ordered suspension of a Section Officer and a Sub Engineer for dereliction of duty. On his visit to Ramaram village on National Highway number 30 about 10 kms from Sukma district headquarters which connects Chhattisgarh with Andhra Pradesh , Munat sought a complete account on expenses incurred in construction and maintenance of the road so far.
The National Highway, while passing through Jagdalpur and Sukma, extends 600 kms till Vijayawada district of Andhra Pradesh. The Minister, while on his inspection, also asked the Section Officer of the NHAI’s Sukma Sub Division to make available all books of accounts to him at the earliest. Munat also expressed his displeasure over tardy pace of work of ‘Gaurav Path’ in Sukma while also expressing anger over the quality of finished work at the site.
later, the Minister while chairing a review meeting in Sukma, ordered suspension of NHAI’s Chief Engineer of Jagdalpur Division D K Pradhan for not being present in the meeting. While chairing another review meeting at Jagdalpur divisional headquarters, Munat after noticing tardy pace of work by the NHAI division’s Sukma, Konta and Bhopalpattanam sections, stressed on the need of constant monitoring of the progress of the project.
The Minister also directed to issue show cause notices to both the Superintending Engineer and the Executive Engineer for not taking the monitoring of the progress of work seriously. Notably, the total length of the aforesaid national highways is 635.20 kms. Munat would now inspect the condition of highways and bridges in Raipur division on January 24 and Surguja division on January 28 and 29.