THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Two road projects in Kerala would be developed under the Bharatmala scheme of the union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH).
They are NH 85’s 167-km stretch, Kochi – Muvattupuzha – Adimali – Munnar – Bodi – Madurai, and NH 213’s 218-km Kozhikode – Palakkad–Coimbatore–Salem road. But the state government has to develop the four-lane road with 45-metre width at a cost of Rs 5,000 crore for 100 km. With the fiscal crunch, the government is facing a dilemma over the Bharatmala project.
The union government had announced its prestigious project last month--the second largest highways construction project after the National Highway Development Project (NHDP) involving 50,000-km highway work across the country. The other day a high-level committee agreed to the sanctioning of project (SoP) when NH 85 and NH 213 in Kerala were included under the Bharatmala project.
The main agencies undertaking the work under Bharatmala are the National Highway Authority of India and National Highway and Industrial Development Corporation. But the state PWD will have to bear 10 percent of the funding, a PWD source said.
“The state has to ac quire land and then update the agencies. Already, the existing NH development works are in limbo,” the official said.
The Modi government plans to get Bharatmala project rolling by December next year.
“States like Rajasthan and Maharashtra are going ahead with the project. We hope the state government will change its policies. The file on the Bharatmala scheme is before PWD secretary G. Kamala Vardhana Rao,” added the official.
