Road, Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari has convened a two-day marathon review meeting on Thursday and Friday of all the ongoing projects, worth Rs 3 lakh crore, of his Ministry as also that of the central road making agency NHAI.
Ministry sources said progress of about 500 projects especially struck/delayed projects will be taken up during the meeting to be held at Manesar near national Capital. Various stakeholders numbering about 600 Concessionaries/Contractors/Bankers and concerned officials of Union Governments and its Departments/Organisations, State NH Division, State PWD Departments will be attending the review meeting on January 23-24.
“This meeting is an important platform for ironing out issues and exploring the way forward for pending projects and helping in expediting the implementation,” said a MoRTH official. Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways General (Retd) VK Singh will also attend the marathon meeting.
Officials said the first day of the meeting projects of South Zone (Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Telengana, Pondicherry, Karnataka) and Central Zone (Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat) will be reviewed while projects of Haryana, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal will be taken up on Friday.
The projects in the States of Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra and Goa will be taken up afterwards. It may be stated that issues related to projects of North-Eastern States, and NHIDCL have already been reviewed in a separate meeting early this year.
This is the second time within a week when Gadkari will be chairing a meeting of entire Transport Ministry and stakeholders with the first being the National Road Safety Council meeting last week when it was deliberated to improve road and highways infrastructure.
In the meeting, expressing concern for fatalities on roads, Gadkari had advocated to penalise the officers for faulty engineering of road infrastructure.