Govt's aim to contruct 20 km of road everyday fails

NEW DELHI: The Centre’s ambitious promise of constructing 20 km of new highways every day has fallen flat. With the financial year coming to an end, the latest statistics show that the Government could achieve merely 53% of the targets set for 2010-11.

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, the prime implementing agencies for the Government’s highway programme, had set the target of constructing 2,500 km of highways. However, till January this year, with just two months to go for end of financial year, only 1,322.38 km had been completed. This works to around 52.89% of target being achieved.

The performance is worse than last fiscal where against a target of 3,165 km, 2,693 km (85.09% achievement) of highways were constructed. Sources in the ministry said that this year’s performance will improve only slightly in the next two months.

When former Minister of Road Transport and Highways Kamal Nath had taken over the reins of the Ministry he had promised that NHAI would construct 20 km of new highways in a day by June 2010. However, the daily progress figures are quite bad. So far, from April to December, 2010, Government agencies could build a measly 9.90 km in a day. The justification for the tardy progress was given in a reply to a Parliament question on Thursday.

Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways Jitin Prasada said: “In order to meet the target of constructing 20 km of highways per day, it is essential that at any given point of time approximately 20,000 km of works are under way. The pace of award of contracts is being increased to bring more projects under implementation. Since highway projects have a gestation period of 4 to 5 years from inception, the rate of completion of construction will increase only progressively.”