A decade after its foundation stone was laid by then Chief Minister Madhu Koda in 2007, phase VII of Ring Road Project has finally started appearing in its final shape. Road Construction Department Engineer in Chief Ras Bihari Singh said on Friday that the 23 km stretch of Ring Road connecting to National Highway (NH) 75 (Ranchi-Daltonganj Road) and NH-33 (Ranchi-Hazaribagh Road) is expected to be completed by March 2018.
“There were initial hurdles which remain there in every project of such scale. However, we have crossed all those bridges successfully. The company, Jharkhand Accelerated Road Development Company limited (JARDCl), has assured us of completing the project by March’18 and the way they have been progressing on the project makes us believe in them,” said Singh on Friday.
Notably, Koda had laid foundation stone of the stretch in 2007, and the project was trapped into technical glitches including that of land acquisition right after that. There were around half a dozen bridges, four over-bridges and culverts to be constructed which took more than expected time. “Most of the flyovers and bridges are in either constructed or are in advance stage of completion. Construction of road thereafter is not such a huge task,” added Singh.
The project of high importance keeping connectivity and change-over in mind not only missed the original deadline of July 2010, but also missed two extension deadlines. This is why the project cost also shot up to around double of what was estimated.
Distributed in seven phases, the 86 km Ranchi Ring Road has seen works of 36 Kms including of phase III, IV, V and VI completed, while phases I and II have been included in the NHAI’s four-lane project between Ranchi and Jamshedpur.
Phase III of the project runs between Rampur along NH-33 and Tupudana on Ranchi-Khunti State Highway, whereas phase IV links Tupudana with NH-23 (Ranchi-Gumla Road).