BENGALURU: Even as traffic crawls daily on the Hebbal flyover, work on the much-needed signal-free loop and underpass project here is proceeding even slower. There is no chance it would meet even the extended deadline of June 2019. The contractor, PJB Engineering Pvt Ltd, has completed just 20 per cent of the work on the Rs 87-crore project. The big bone of contention is the nonpayment of dues owed to the concern by the Bangalore Development Authority.
Apart from ensuring that those entering the city from the airport can zoom into the city, the signal-free elevated project will enormously help residents of Kodigehalli, Sahkar Nagar, Yelahanka, Dollars Colony and surrounding areas who use the Hebbal flyover.
Explaining the slow pace of work, Paul Verghese, operations manager of PJB, told The New Indian Express, “BDA owes us around Rs 25 crore for seven of its infrastructure projects we have undertaken across the city, including the Doddanakundi flyover and Hennur underpass. We are starved of cash and not in a position to mobilise resources required to complete it.”
Of the planned 45 piers, work on just three of them have been completed while piling work (laying of the foundation) for all of them is over. A perennially cash-strapped BDA has been trying different options to keep the project alive but nothing concrete seems to have emerged so far. Following a recent directive given by Deputy Chief Minister and BDA Chairman G Parameshwara to the Authority asking it to hand over its works on flyovers and bridges to the BBMP, the BDA had written a letter on November 30 to the civic agency asking it to take over the loop project too. BBMP is yet to respond to it.
The BDA had also written to the Urban Development Department on November 25 requesting for release of funds to the tune of Rs 145 crore for the project under the Nagarottana works of BBMP. “The government is yet to take a call on it,” a top official said. “The BBMP gets funds from the state but the BDA never gets it. So, we are asking for funds for it,” he added.
The amount requested also includes Rs 7.98 crore for maintenance of the Hebbal flyover and Rs 50 crore for an initially proposed loop from KR Puram to the airport, which has been temporarily shelved along with the elevated steel bridge project. “We want to revive this but it needs to get the approval for it both from the BDA Board and the government,” he said.
Asked about the fate of the project, another official said if cash was made available shortly, then the project could see the light of day by December 2019 at the earliest. “Originally proposed in January 2016, it was supposed to be in place by January 2018, but the steel bridge proposal and cash crunch has dragged it,” he added.