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NHs in State to Be Made Four-Lane Roads

  • Union secretary in the ministry of road transport and highways A K Upadhyaya said on Tuesday that inauguration of the newly constructed bridge, Mahasetu, across Kosi river, in Supaul district linking the two halves of Mithila region would be historic for the nation, including the Mithila region, as this would constrict substantially the distance of the East-West Corridor."Distance of the two halves of the Mithila regions would be squeezed lessening considerably the time to cover road distance between them," he said, adding Union minister, road transport and highways, P C Joshi is arriving to inaugurate the Mahasetu on Wednesday. This would set a new paradigm in the annals of national highways (NHs) serving the purpose by shortening the distance to North-East states from rest of the country.
  • During an interaction with the members of the Bihar Industries Association (BIA), Upadhyaya said that most of the NHs in the state would be four-lane ones while others will be six-lane under the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) programme.He said that the work for four-laning the NH over the Koilwar bridge across Sone river is being done. He said that there already existed two-lane NH stretch over Koilwar bridge and another two lanes is to be constructed to widen it for smooth flow of traffic. He said that the Mokama-Hathidih road bridge would also be a four-lane one under NH scheme.
  • Upadhyaya said that in Bihar the coverage of NHs is 38 square km out of 100 square km area as against national average of 22 square km per 100 square km. BIA's plea was that the coverage of NHs should be done on the basis of population density which is less in Bihar, only 4.4 km NH per lakh population as against national figure of 6.9 km NH per lakh population.BIA president K P S Keshri said that the NHs are the lifeline of the economy to benefit the people and so the NH construction in Bihar should be done on the basis of population density. Keshri sought six-laning of Gandhi Setu across the Ganga near Patna by creating iron super structure and laying concrete structure as its foundation and columns are solid.
  • Upadhyaya said that Patna-Bakhtiarpur-Khagaria stretch of NH would also be a four-lane one with adding of two lanes to the existing two lanes.To a TOI query regarding demand of road construction minister Nandkishore Yadav to denotify the NH 101 and 103 which are in bad shape and could not be maintained by the NHAI, Upadhyaya said that in the current financial year only Rs 1,000 crore was available for maintenance of NHs, but in the next fiscal hopefully the maintenance amount would be increased to Rs 2,000 crore.

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