The issue of the delay in completion of the National Highway between Bhubaneswar and Puri before lord Jagannath’s Nabakalebar festival next year under the pretext of court stay orders on land acquirement has now come under the scanner of the Odisha High Court.
Adjudicating a PIl on the issue on Saturday, a Division Bench of the court comprising Chief Justice Amitava Roy and Justice AK Rath directed the petitioner’s advocate Nishikant Mishra to furnish, within a week, details of the cases in which stay orders have been issued by the High Court.
Annexing a report obtained under the RTI Act, Mishra in his PIl has alleged that the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) is not serious about completion of the 59-km four-lane road. “Although the `500-crore project was scheduled to be completed by September 2013, only 80 per cent of the road is completed till date,” Mishra has stated, adding that the work on the remaining stretch could not be taken up due to the HC’s embargo on land acquisition.
To an RTI application, the NHAI had informed Mishra in May this year that the project has missed its deadline by over seven months and it is being further hampered due to the delay in land acquisition. “Due to the High Court’s stay order on land acquisition on the Puri bypass, the work has been delayed,” NHAI Project Director Anil Dixit had told in reply to Mishra’s RTI application.
Mishra in his PIl has sought the HC’s intervention for completion of the road project before the Nabakalebar in July next year. Mishra has also sought a direction to the NHAI to complete the other bypasses at Bhubaneswar, Pipili, Chandanpur and Bata Mangala on this stretch before the Nabakalebar and maintain the original roads passing through these markets.
“Due to plying of heavy vehicles carrying construction materials of the project, the roads passing through these junctions are now in a dilapidated state,” the PIl has pointed out.