BENGALURU: If you are waiting to zip down the 10-lane Bengaluru-Mysuru highway in 90 minutes, don’t rev up yet. The project is all set to miss yet another deadline, this time due to the second wave of Covid-19. The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has taken up the work at an estimated cost of Rs 7,400 crore. The stretch includes nine major bridges, 44 minor bridges and four road overbridges and the project has been divided into two packages - Bengaluru to Nidaghatta in Maddur (56.2 km) and Nidaghatta to Mysuru (60 km). The highway will also have bypasses at Bidadi, Ramanagara, Channapatna, Maddur, Mandya and Srirangapatna.
In March 2014, the Union Ministry of Surface Transport announced expansion of the Bengaluru-Mysuru State Highway (SH-88) into a 10-lane National Highway (NH-275), covering a distance of 117 km from the NICE Road entrance in Bengaluru to the Ring Road junction in Mysuru. The project was supposed to start in 2018 and be completed by 2020 in 30 months’ time. But, after much dilly-dallying, the work started only in early 2019 as there were issues including land acquisition, shifting of amenities and legal aspects. The deadline was then revised to 2021.
The project hit a hurdle last year due to the lockdown last year and many workers, most of them from North Indian states, Odisha and West Bengal, returning home. This year, though work is going on, Covid-19 cases among the workers have slowed down the progress.Speaking to ‘The New Indian Express’, Sridhar, a Project Development Officer with NHAI, said that the work is going on, but at a slow pace. There are around 8,000 workers on the entire stretch of which more than 200 tested positive in the past few months. Some were advised to isolate themselves while some others even left for their hometowns. “We have acquired 98 per cent of the required land, except for a few small stretches. Our concern is the workers,’’ he said.Official sources said the first package was supposed to be completed by March 2022.