To put an end to inordinate delays, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTh) had launched ‘ Bharatmala Pariyojana’, an umbrella programme to develop key economic highway corridors in the country.
Seven years later, an audit of the programme has revealed that expansion work along the three major high-priority highways, connecting Chennai with other Tamil Nadu districts and Karnataka, are still pending.
This includes eight-lane work on Chennai Madurai highway (93 km), Chennai-Bengaluru (158 km) and new Chennai-Salem (277 km) highway projects. “No timelines were prescribed either for award or for completion of projects falling in any particular priority, rendering the priorities meaningless,” the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report, released last week, said.
The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) did not submit its reply to CAG. More than 50,000 vehicles use these stretches every day. Experts attribute the delays to three reasons: Court cases associated with acquiring private land for projects, tender process and lack of coordination between state and Union governments.
K P Subramanian, retired professor, Transportation Engineering & Urban Planning, Anna University said, “Transportation is the catalyst for socioeconomic devel opment. Postponing road expansion works will definitely have an adverse impact on the state’s economic growth. Consequently, it will also cause inflation”.
This delay by NHAI has not only worsened the traffic congestion but has made safe commute a farfetched notion. Nearly one-third of road accidents in Tamil Nadu occur on NHAI stretches, according to the MoRTH report. Despite this, the NHAI has remained sluggish in repairing accident-prone stretches, stated another report by CAG released last
week.
The central agency between 2011 and 2018 had identified close to 263 accident blackspots (five or more accidents in a year) on national highway stretches in and around Chennai.
Of this, only nine have been permanently rectified. NHAI Chennai officials said shortterm measures were completed at 74 spots, and the remaining work will be completed in a year.
“Without speed control measures, rash driving has become the norm on Chennai – Thindivanam stretch where four people died just last week”, said S Yuvraj, from Tamil Nadu Truck Owners Association.
Despite chief minister M K Stalin’s concern about poor maintenance of Chennai-Bengaluru highway, not much has changed. Intersections where construction work are happening are riddled with potholes or craters. “Leave aside relaying roads, the NHAI is not even ready to repair streetlights on Chennai-Madurai highway for over a year now,” said G Ganesh, a Singaperumalkoil resident.
