NHIDCL to award Rs 6,000 crore highway projects in Jammu & Kashmir

NEW DELHI: State-run National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDCL) plans to award contracts worth about Rs 6,000 crore for construction of roads in Jammu & Kashmir, a move aimed at providing faster and better connectivity in the state.

The NHIDCL which plans undertaking Rs 1.3 lakh crore projects pan India over the next five years, will also be laying about 130 km of projects in Jammu & Kashmir under Modi government's ambitious Bharat Mala Project.

"NHIDCL has set a target to award projects worth about Rs 6,000 crore in J&K, including about Rs 1,300 crore projects under Bharat Mala and about Rs 1,050 crore projects under National Highways Connectivity to Tourists Places (NHRTP)," NHIDCL Managing Director Anand Kumar told PTI.

The Bharat Mala project envisages construction of 5,000 km of road network all along the borders and coastal areas at a cost of Rs 55,000 crore.

Kumar said the company has already initiated process for awarding contracts for widening of 274 km stretch of Chenamani Kishtnar-SinlhanPass-Khanabal section on NH 244 and 35 km stretch of Jammu-Akhnoor section of NH 144A.

He said under Bharat Mala, the company will be undertaking two projects in the state -- 67 km of Punch-Uri stretch on NH 1 and 65 km stretch of Qazitur on NH-1 to Tangdhar project.

"Under NHRTP, we are going to take two projects that include Baramullah on NH-1A to Gulmarg and Chenani-Khallani stretch. Both together are 103 km," Kumar said.

NHIDCL, a fully-owned company of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, awarded 18 projects last fiscal for building 600 km of roads at an expenditure of about Rs 8,500 crore in Tripura, Assam, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh.

The company plans to award road packages worth Rs 14,599 crore in Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Sikkim and Nagaland in the current fiscal while it has marked 10 projects worth Rs 6,936 crore for 2016-17 mostly for these states.

Of the current lot of projects worth about Rs 35,000 crore being handled by it, mostly are in the North-East while the remaining are in Andaman & Nicobar, Jammu & Kashmir, Uttarakhand and West Bengal.

Earlier, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari has said NHIDCL, on the lines of National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), will expedite projects mainly in the North-East and areas sharing international borders to boost economic activities, besides job creation.

NHIDCL was incorporated in July 2014 with the aim to fast-track highway projects that have been pending with the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) for several years.

The Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari earlier this week announced projects worth Rs 25,000 crore for the state by the end of the year in addition to onging projects worth Rs 10,000 crore, besides Rs 10,000 crore for constructing Zojila tunnel in the state.