CM Naveen Patnaik raises concern over delay in Cuttack-Sambalpur road work

BHUBANESWAR: Chief minister Naveen Patnaik has raised concern over slow progress of expansion work of the 265-km Cuttack-Sambalpur NH-55 resulting in frequent road accidents.
In a letter to Union road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari on Friday, which was released to the media on Saturday, Naveen pointed out that 196 people died in the section in 399 accidents in the past two years.

Naveen wrote the letter a day after Gadkari told the Lok Sabha in a written reply on Thursday that the work is likely to be completed by December.
Pointing out that five years after the work started in 2017 the upgradation is yet to be completed, Naveen wrote that the “inordinate delay” is causing “public agitation and discontentment among the people.”
Naveen sought Gadkari’s personal intervention to complete the project at the earliest by stating that though the work is being reviewed with regional officials of National Highway Authority of India (at regular intervals, the outcome was not satisfactory.
Naveen also highlighted that the ongoing work is chaotic. “The above section of NH-55 serves as the lifeline of millions of people of western Odisha. Haphazard construction activities and miserable plight of the road causes frequent accidents leading to loss of human lives,” Naveen wrote.
In reply to a question by BJD MP Chandrani Murmu, Gadkari has replied that around 60 km of road from Angul towards Cuttack will be completed by June while the rest will be completed by December. The work in being executed in three packages. The Sambalpur-Angul 153-km stretch which will cost an estimated Rs 2,491.53 crore has progressed 72.9% while the 51.8-km section from Cuttack towards Angul, being built at an estimated cost of Rs 991.41 crore, has a physical progress of 60%. These would be completed by December, reveals Gadkari’s reply.
Another 59.8 km from Angul toward Cuttack being executed at an estimated Rs 999.32 crore, with a current physical progress of 67.2%, would be completed by June.