Road web to stop Naxals in their tracks, MHA urged to earmark Rs 12,000 crore for plan

NEW DELHI: To counter insurgency , the Centre wants to lay a web or roads in the Naxal-affected areas. To construct 7,300-km roads, the highways ministry has reportedly urged the home ministry to earmark Rs 12,000 crore in its budget. Recently, the road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari had said that the government will launch the second phase of Road Re quirement Plan (RRP) in areas which have seen no such development. Sources said since the road ministry cannot foot this massive project from its budgetary allocation, so it has pushed for a separate allocation for home ministry.

The issue was also discussed between road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari and Jharkhand chief minister Raghubar Das during their recent meeting in Delhi.

The two leaders had deliberated how building roads was necessary in these areas to solve the Naxal problem and to take development to the poorest of the poor.

The Road Requirement Plan II will cover 34 districts in states, including Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal and Maharashtra.

Min plans system to store NH details

The road ministry has set a target to have an asset management system in place in the next one year that will have all details of the entire 90,000 km of national highways, including their condition and the extent of deterioration to allow authorities to plan repair and relaying of roads. To start with, the ministry has decided to conduct a pilot on 3,000 km in next three months. Sources said the survey of the identified stretches would be run using ITand with detailed videography of roads. The details of land records would be fed into the system.