Gadkari nod to Jharkhand road projects worth 7.5k cr.

Jharkhand got a huge booty of dividends from the Centre on BJP's foundation day, which coincided with chief Raghubar Das completing 100 days in office, recently. Union minister of road transport and highways Nitin Gadkari announced several projects for Jharkhand, including a multimodal terminal in Sahebganj, development of a smart city and four-lane bridge on the Ganga in the same district. Gadkari also cleared five pending national highway projects and announced dates for awarding contracts in another five during the current financial year.

After a two-hour meeting with officials of the Jharkhand government under chief secretary Rajiv Gauba, officials of National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and bureaucrats from the department of road transport and highways in presence of Das, Gadkari announced to start works on pending NHAI projects measuring 241.69km in total at an estimated expense of Rs. 1820 crore within a month.

Most of these projects have not been completed due to various bottlenecks, including hurdles in land acquisition, delay in forest clearance or lackadaisical attitude of contractors.

While the Centre has terminated two such contracts awarded earlier, some of the projects are due for completion in the next two to six months. 'Work will start on all these projects within a month as we have sorted out all the bottlenecks,' Gadkari said, clarifying that banks have agreed to finance work on the Ranchi-Rargaon-Mahulia road for which equity would be issued by April 25.


TIMES OF INDIA