The prestigious four-laning project of the 300-km Jammu-Srinagar national highway, being executed to provide all-weather road connectivity to the Kashmir valley, has become a casualty to rampant ‘political interference’.
The work on the treacherous 79-km Udhampur-Banihal stretch of the highway is yet to pick up pace due to “law and order” problems created by “political workers”.
Given the difficulties faced by the executing agencies, the road project is likely to get delayed.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had laid the foundation stone of the 79-km Udhampur-Banihal stretch —Ramban-Udhampur road (43-km) and Banihal-Ramban road (36 km) — on the Jammu-Srinagar highway on November 7 last year. The project is being executed at a cost of Rs 4,306 crore.
An amount of Rs 2136.97 crore has been sanctioned for the Udhampur-Ramban section while Rs 2168.66 crore was approved for the Ramban-Banihal section. The Hindustan Construction Company has been assigned the task of four-laning the Ramban-Banihal section of the national highway while Gammon India has been allotted the work of the Udhampur-Ramban (Udhampur to Chenani and Nashri to Ramban) project.
“We have started work at four places on the Udhampur-Ramban section and six places on the Ramban-Banihal section but the executing agencies (Gammon India and HCC) have been facing difficulties in carrying out their activities due to rampant interference of local political leaders who have been pressurising them to allot work in favour of their workers,” said a senior official of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI).
The NHAI official said: “So far, we have not been able to execute work on the Udhampur-Banihal stretch to a desired level due to the law and order problem in the form of disturbance created by political workers. They have been creating obstacles in work for petty interests. In the pasts one and a half months, there have been four instances where political leaders of a regional party visited the construction site and got work stopped on the Udhampur-Ramban section. Similarly, three such incidents have been reported on the Ramban-Banihal section where some persons at the behest of a local leader visited three sites and forced the executing agency to stop work.”
Sources said the district administration had issued notices to the Panthers Party for allegedly creating problem in execution of the highway project. “Local Congress leaders have been warned of strict action if they did not stop creating trouble in the completion of the project,” a source said.
The four-laning of the Udhampur-Ramban section is scheduled to be completed by December 2018. The difficult Ramban-Banihal stretch will be completed by May 2019.
Project Director, NHAI, Jammu, RP Singh said there were some law and order problems which were being sorted out. “The executing agencies are busy preparing the detailed designs of the two projects which are expected to be completed within a stipulated time,” he said, adding that nearly 50 per cent of the work of the Jammu-Srinagar project has been completed.
The four-laning project has been divided into six sub-projects, Jammu-Udhampur road (65 km), Chenani-Nashri tunnel (9.2 km), Ramban-Udhampur road (43 km), Banihal-Ramban road (36 km), Qazigund-Banihal road (15.25 km) and Srinagar-Banihal road (67.7 km).
Deputy Commissioner, Udhampur, Shahid Iqbal Choudhary said the NHAI officials had been conveyed that they would be provided all possible help for the execution of the project. “We have told them to bring to our notice any problem in the execution of the project,” the DC said, adding that they have also been asked to engage maximum local labourers in the project.
Four-laning of Jammu-Srinagar NH hit by ‘political interference’
