Srinagar: Governor N N Vohra on Wednesday reviewed the progress of the upcoming Ring Road Projects, which will open new economic opportunities and de-congest vehicular traffic in the twin capital cities of Jammu and Srinagar.
Chairing a high-level meeting at the Civil Secretariat here on Wednesday evening, the Governor called upon the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) and the concerned Departments of the State Government to adopt a well-coordinated and focused approach for ensuring that the twin projects, part of the Prime Minister’s Development Package (PMDP), are completed within the stipulated time frame of three years.
Advisors to the Governor B B Vyas and Khurshid Ahmed Ganai, along with Chief Secretary BVR Subrahmanyam, participated in the meeting and made valuable suggestions on how to remove the bottlenecks and expedite the projects.
The Governor asked the Director of NHAI to ensure that both projects go ahead at full speed and promptly inform the Chief Secretary, if any difficulty was faced in implementation.
The work on Jammu Project started earlier this year and the Srinagar Project is expected to commence in the coming weeks.
The officers said the total length of the project is 58.255 km in Jammu from Raya Morh to Nagrota, of which 47.160 km are in plain terrain and 11.095 km fall in hilly areas.
In Srinagar, the project length is 60.942 km, which will be taken up in two packages; one from Gallander which ends at Sumbal road junction (42.10 km length) and the second from Sumbal road junction to Wayul junction on existing NH-1D (around 19 km).
Mr Vohra asked the Engineers to be imaginative in planning the road alignments as relatively longer roads may actually cost less than shorter roads, which have more bridges and more culverts and which involve cutting of more trees.
”We are committed to ensuring that the minimum number of trees, cultivable and forest land comes under such mega-developmental projects in our eco-fragile state,” the Governor observed.
Officials of the NHAI, the executing agency for the two projects, briefed the Governor about the status of the work on the twin roads, coming up at a cumulative cost of nearly Rs 4,000 crore.
The NHAI officers said that once the land is handed over to them in Kashmir, their engineering teams will urgently get down to work and other issues relating to shifting of utilities, including electricity supply and water connections, will also be resolved.