Finish pending works on war-footing: CM Jagan

VIJAYAWADA: Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy has asked officials to speed up the pending R&B and approach road projects and complete the repairs to all damaged roads at the earliest.

The chief minister conducted a review meeting on the condition of roads in AP and viewed a photo exhibition on Wednesday. He asked officials to display past and present conditions of the roads through photographs after completion of the works under the Nadu-Nedu programme, so that the people would know what was done.

He said that like never before, road repairs are taken up in AP in a planned manner, where almost Rs 2500 crore was allocated for developing R&B roads and Rs 1072.92 crore on restoring roads in Panchayatraj areas.

“The opposition parties are trying to mislead the people,” he said and advised the authorities to create awareness among the public on how much the state and central governments had spent on road repairs.

Further, CM Jagan emphasized completing pending bridges, approach roads, and RoBs on a war-footing and making them ready by next year. “Maintain quality in the construction by following the guidelines and prescribed standards,” he said.

The officials were told to focus on finding a permanent solution to the bridges and culverts that were damaged during the Nivar Cyclone in the combined YSR Kadapa, Chittoor, and Nellore districts.

The officials said Rs 2500 crore is being spent for repairing 7804km of R&B roads. Of the total 1168 works, 522 were completed and the rest will be ready by monsoon. Under NIDA-1, as many as 233 roads and bridges are being built at Rs 2479 crore, wherein the first phase works will be completed by August and the works on 33 RoB under NIDA-2 will be taken up from December.

Besides these, 38 new RoBs are being constructed at Rs 2662 crore while Rs 915 crore is being spent for repairing the bridges damaged due to Nivar cyclone.

Officials said works under NDB phase-1 will be started by the end of May, wherein 1244km of roads will be laid at an expenditure of Rs 3014 crore.

Similarly, under NDB phase-2, 1268km of roads is to be developed at a cost of Rs 3386 crore, which will be taking off from December 2022.

For National Highways, a total of 99 works are under way, wherein a 3079.94 km stretch is being expanded by 10 metres at a cost of Rs 30,000 crore.

In addition to these, another six projects at a cost of Rs 15,875 crore are taken up for improving state connectivity, which includes developing the Bangalore-Chennai, Chittoor-Chennai, Raipur-Visakhapatnam, Solapur-Kurnool, Hyderabad-Visakhapatnam and the Nagpur-Vijayawada roads. The DPRs are ready for the construction of seven more national highways in the state at a cost of Rs 41,654 crore.

The government is also repairing Panchayat Raj roads with an outlay of Rs 1072.92 crore, which also includes covering a stretch of 3,705km from 2019 to 2022 by spending Rs 2131 crore. Apart from this, the government has spent Rs 308 crore on laying 444km of BT approach roads.