Jaipur Development Authority spent Rs 44 lakh for road, only to dig up within six months

JAIPUR: Needlessly spending public exchequer, the Jaipur Development Authority (JDA) had constructed a road spending Rs 44 lakh for a period of not even six months.
The road in question - connecting the Rotary Circle and Tila Number in Jawahar Nagar – was constructed six months ago and officials of the Public Health and Engineering Department (PHED) had dug it up recently to lay down pipelines under the Bisalpur II scheme. Questions had been raised on how JDA went ahead to construct the road when PHED had sought permission from the civic body more than a year back.
“This is a complete waste of public money. When an agency had officially sought permission to dig the road and everybody knew the work would take place within the next six to eight months the civic body should not have passed the work order for construction of this road,” said a JDA official, who did not want to be quoted.
Chief minister Ashok Gehlot, during the budget speech of 2021-22, had announced a few broken roads in the city to be constructed afresh. Accordingly, the process for the construction work of this road was started in June-July 2022. Construction of this road was completed in September 2022. By that time, PHED had sought permission from JDA to dig the road anytime soon to lay down pipelines.
Rajendra Pal, the executive engineer of JDA has denied the development. According to Pal, PHED had earlier sought permission to dig a few roads in the city, but this road was not mentioned in that list. “Earlier PHED had sought permission to dig up the roads adjacent to the OTS Crossing. Only recently, they had applied for permission to dig up this road. We did not have any prior knowledge that this road was in PHED’s blueprint to lay down pipelines,” said Pal.
When TOI contacted PHED officials they refused to comment on the issue. A senior official of the department, however, claimed that PHED was scheduled to lay down pipelines from OTS Crossing on JLN Marg till Transport Nagar area via Jhalana Doongri, Jawahar Nagar, Kaachi Basti and Govind Marg (from near the Pink City Mall).
“Around a year back, we had sought permission for the entire stretch together. In fact, we had deposited Rs 4.50 crore with JDA towards this job. Around three months back we had just applied for the final permission so that we can start the work anytime between mid to end March,” a PHED official added.