A review meeting on the National Highway projects was held under joint chairmanship of Chief Secretary AP Padhi and Union Ministry of Road Transport & Highways Secretary Sanjaya Mitra in the State Secretariat on Friday.
Padhi highlighted the need for sanction of capital region road bypassing the twin city of Cuttack and Bhubaneswar and construction of flyovers at Khandagiri and Gohira Chhak of Bhubaneswar. Mitra gave in-principle approval to these projects and directed the NH officers to go ahead with preparation of project proposals. He assured that these projects would be approved by end of April this year.
It was decided that the Samjajpur railway over-bridge would be completed before this year’s Rath Yatra. The NH from Mangala Ghat to Sterling in Puri would be also made motorable by that time.
The progress of six NH projects, namely 4-laning of Panikoili-Rimuli section of NH-215, widening of Chandikhol-Duburi-Talcher section of NH-200, 4-laning of Baleswar-Jahrpokharia section of NH-5 and 4-laning of Angul-Sambalpur section of NH-42 and 4-laning of Bhubaneswar-Puri section of NH-203 and 6-laning of Bhubaneswar-Chandikhol section of NH-5 was reviewed.
Mainly, the issues relating to forest diversion proposals, disbursement of compensations, tree felling permission, permissive possession of Government land for NHs were discussed in detail and necessary decisions were taken. Padhi set the timelines for implementation of the decisions by the respective departments.
Timelines were also set for the NH projects in pipeline. These projects include 4-laning of Cuttack-Angul section of NH-42, 4-laning of Biramitrapur-Rajamunda section of NH-23, 4-laning of Rajamunda-Barkote section of NH-23, 6-laning of Chandikhol-Baleswar section of NH-5, 4-laning of Teleibani-Sambalpur section of NH-6 and
widening of Rimuli-Roxy-Rajamunda section of
NH-215.
The status of the newly-assigned 1,221 km of roads to the NHAI was also reviewed at the meeting.
Forest & Environment Principal Secretary Suresh Chandra Mohapatra, Revenue Principal Secretary Mona Sharma, Works Secretary Nalini Kanta Pradhan, State Pollution Control Board Member-Secretary Debidatta Biswal and NHAI Odisha Chief General Manager Dharmananda Pradhan participated in the deliberations.