BHUBANESWAR:Even a year after the State Government’s request to the Centre to expedite implementation of different National Highway (NH) projects including a few flyovers at important locations to ease congestion, there has been no visible progress.
A glaring example is the Panikoili-Rajamunda section of NH-215. The project, sanctioned by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways in 2004-05, was notified for expansion by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) under National Highway Development Project (NHDP-III) in 2007.
Four-laning of the 167 km stretch from Panikoili to Rimuli was started on May 2, 2013 and scheduled to be completed by October 28, 2015. But it has remained incomplete even after five years.
Attributing the delay to slow land acquisition process of the State Government, sources in NHAI said expansion of 159 km out of 167 km has been completed. It has been targeted to complete the remaining seven km by end of March, 2019.
NHAI sources said on Rimuli-Rajamunda section (96 km), the project has been divided into two packages. Work on the 46-km stretch from Rimuli (in Keonjhar district) to Koida (in Sundargarh) was started on May 12, 2018 with an estimated cost of about `668 crore. The scheduled date of completion is May 11, 2020. The project is being executed by Montecarlo Construction Limited.
Similarly, the 54-km stretch from Koida to Rajamunda in Sundargarh district, which will be a cement concrete road entailing an investment of Rs 1,020 crore, will be completed by May 7, 2020. The work is being implemented in joint venture by KMC Construction and RKD Construction.
Expressing concern over inordinate delay in completion of major NH road projects in the State, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik had taken up the issue with Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari during his visit to New Delhi in September last year.
The Chief Minister had also requested Gadkari for construction of two flyovers in the Capital City, one near Khandagiri square and the other at Gohira near Infovalley-2. The two projects are yet to take off.
The NH projects flagged by Naveen include four-laning of Cuttack-Angul (NH-42) and Barkote-Panposh (NH-23), six-laning of Chandikhole-Balasore (NH-16) and four-laning of Chandikhole-Duburi-Talcher section of NH-200.