Not all is hunky dory with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's Rs 58,000 crore (Rs 580 billion) National Highway Development Project.
Till mid-July, the government managed to complete just under a quarter, or 24 per cent, of the first phase of the project, which entails multi-laning 5,846 km of national highways under the Golden Quadrilateral project. The project was originally scheduled for completion in December 2003.
As per the latest estimates of the ministry of road transport and highways, only around 45 per cent of the work on the Golden Quadrilateral is expected to be completed by the end of this year.
The NHDP, announced in 1998, was the most ambitious initiative of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee with the government citing the progress in the project as one of its major success stories.
Of the 5,846 km Golden Quadrilateral project, which involves four-laning of highways between Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata, 1,408 km of highways have been multi-laned so far. By the end of December 2003, four-laning and upgradation in 2,630 km is expected to be completed.
While the Centre has officially extended the deadline for finishing the project to December 2004, the ministry of road transport and highways has now told the Planning Commission that the work will not be completed before mid-2005. Planning Commission Member N K Singh had recently undertaken a review of the National Highway Development Project.
The ministry asserts that work on the project is largely on schedule in most sections. Problems of law and order and lack of co-operation by some states for land acquisition has, however, posed a problem for the Centre.
Of the 8,603 hectares of land estimated to be acquired for ongoing projects under the programme, only 6,412 hectares (74.5 per cent) has been acquired. The process of acquisition of the remaining land, around 2,191 hectares, was still in progress, an official said.
"There are land acquisition problems in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and to some extent in Orissa," the official said. Law and order problem in Bihar and adjoining areas were also adding to the problem, he said. Further, awarding of contracts on sections funded by World Bank and the Asian Development Bank are holding up commencement of work in these sections.
When NHDP was announced, the Golden Quadrilateral was slated for completion in December 2004. Minister for road transport and highways B C Khanduri had subsequently advanced the completion time and said that "substantial completion" of the project would be achieved by December 2003. In April this year, however, the ministry reverted to the December 2004 deadline.
In the case of the second phase of the NHDP, comprising 7,300 km north-south corridor linking Srinagar to Kanyakumari and east-west corridor joining Silchar and Porbandar, work has been completed in 557 km (about 7.6 per cent of total work). This portion of the project is slated for completion in 2007.
