7 stretches of East-West, North-South corridors yet to be completed

NEW DELHI: Even after more than 25 years, seven stretches of East-West and North-South corridors are yet to be completed in Assam, West Bangel and Jammu & Kashmir, the road transport ministry informed the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday. It said that while construction is underway on six stretches, the appointed date for the remaining one is not yet declared, meaning construction has not started yet.

The North-South and East-West (NS-EW) Corridor project, providing four-lane highway connectivity from Srinagar to Kanyakumari and Silchar to Saurashtra, respectively, was approved in Dec 2000 as part of the National Highways Development Project (NHDP) Phase-II during the tenure of Atal Bihari Vajpayee govt.

As per the ministry’s reply, the total length of impacted sections is around 140 km. Officials said work on the 49.2-km stretch in Assam under the East West Corridor was impacted due to landslides and three stretches with cumulative length of 77 km in West Bengal were delayed due to issues, including land acquisition. As for three impacted stretches in J&K under the North-South corridor, officials said this was due to change in plan to build tunnels and viaducts, and poor performance of contractors.

In another reply on the status of ongoing expressway projects, the ministry said that 55 stretches are under different stages of implementation, and contracts for five of these have either been terminated or are under foreclosure/termination. In the detailed reply, it said that while contracts for two packages of Vadodara-Mumbai Expressway and Delhi-Amritsar-Katra Expressway have been terminated, contracts for three other packages of Delhi-Amritsar-Katra Expressway are under foreclosure or termination. In a section of Bangalore-Chennai Expressway, work has stopped due to financial constraints of the contractor.