Centre sanctions Rs 6,804 crore for a bridge & roads in Bihar

PATNA: The Centre on Monday sanctioned Rs6,804 crore for new national highways (NHs) and a four-lane bridge across the Ganga parallel to the existing Vikramshila Setu near Barari Ghat in Bhagalpur district. The projects would be over and above the special package that PM Narendra Modi had announced for the state during electioneering for the then assembly election in August 2015.

“The eight projects sanctioned by the Centre on Monday include 357km of additional NH of which 112km stretch is to be four-lane road and the remaining 245km will be 10 metres wide,” state road construction department (RCD) minister Nand Kishore Yadav said over phone from Delhi. The 4.37km-long bridge entails an expenditure of Rs1,900 crore and would also have 10.6km-long approach road on both sides. He said the four-lane bridge would be constructed by the NHAI and the roads concerned by the NH wing of the state RCD.

Yadav said the projects cleared included a pair of four-lane NH roads — 50km-long Samastipur-Darbhanga road at a cost of Rs1,612 crore and 62km of Bhagalpur-Dhaka Mor road involving an expenditure of Rs1,121 crore.

The 10-metre wide NH and their allotted expenditures cleared at the meeting include the 64km-long Buxar-Chausa-Mohania road (Rs960 crore), 75km of Hajipur-Bachhwara road (Rs552 crore), 18km of Sarwan-Chakai road (Rs80 crore), 78km of Rosera-Bahedi Darbhanga road (Rs452 crore) and 10km-long Saraigarh-Lalganj-Ganpatganj road (Rs127 crore).

Yadav said the eight projects were cleared on Monday at a meeting involving him and Union road transport and national highway secretary Y S Malik, state chief secretary Deepak Kumar, NHAI chairman Sanjeev Ranjan and state RCD principal secretary Amrit Lal Meena. The meeting was convened to review the status of the Rs1.57 lakh crore special package and Rs54,700 crore allotted for the NHs that the PM had announced at his Ara meeting in 2015.