Union Minister for Road Transport, Highways and Shipping, Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, and Drinking Water & Sanitation Nitin Gadkari said today that the new special corporation would start work soon.
“A special corporation for the North East has been formed. It will be tasked with road work of 10,141 km with an investment of Rs 30,000 crore. The corporation will have its headquarters in Guwahati,” Gadkari said, addressing a press meet through video-conferencing to the media in ten cities across the country.
He however, did not provide details like whether the projects to be taken up by the corporation would be only greenfield ones or if existing projects would also be part of its jurisdiction.
Asked about the delay in the completion of the East-West Corridor, Gadkari admitted that there was some problem in the Silchar side of the project, but added that it would be completed by 2015.
The minister said the government is considering using the Brahmaputra to transport goods from Haldia port to the North East.
Regarding the need for developing infrastructure along the India-China border, Gadkari said earlier there were some issues with land acquisition and securing clearance from the Ministry of Environment and Forest, but now changes have been brought about, doing away with the need for such approvals in an area within a 100-km range of the international frontier.
Gadkari said around 17,000 villages across the country have problems related with arsenic and fluoride pollution and bacterial water and efforts are on to tackle them.
“In some states there is scarcity of power which is hampering the effort. So many water schemes have been shifted to solar power. Altogether 3,248 water schemes have been shifted to solar power,” he said.
The government is also using space technology and work is on for preparing a geological and morphological map to study the source, availability and other details about ground water.
“We have set a target to contribute to a two per cent increase in the country’s GDP within two years. So the target is to achieve road building capacity of 30 km of roads per day within two years,” Gadkari said, adding that a similar effort would also be made with regard to inland water transport.
“In the current financial year, 8,500 km of highway projects are targeted for award, out of which 1,860 km have been awarded so far. As far as construction of projects is concerned, 6,300 km have been targeted for construction this fiscal year, out of which 1,000 km have been constructed and 350 km strengthened so far,” he said.
Work is also on for a new Motor Vehicles Act which will usher in e-governance in the field of road transportation, he said.
A new concept of ‘e-dharti’ is being planned to computerise the entire revenue record of the country.
Source: Assam Tribune
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