Jammu and Kashmir High Court Wednesday granted two more weeks to government to inform it about the action taken over “paucity of funds” which is causing delay in completion of bridges and flyovers under execution of Jammu & Kashmir Project Construction Corporation (JKPCC).
Hearing a Public Interest Litigation, a division bench of Chief Justice PankajMithal and Justice Dhiraj Singh Thakur sought an action taken report from the government and JKPCC in terms of its earlier order in this regard.
In an order dated 15 October 2020, the court had pointed out that a report filed by the JKPCC was required to be seriously looked into at the highest level and had directed that its order and copy of the report filed by the Corporation be placed before the Chief Secretary.
In its status report the JKPCC had disclosed that bridges which are under its construction are either funded by the World Bank or by the Government of J&K. In most of the bridges, the Corporation said, the paucity of funds was causing delay in the completion of the execution of the projects.
The report revealed that JKPCC was an executing agency only and the budget component in respect of all the bridges was the dominion with project authorities like PWD and those funded by the World Bank. The Corporation had however said that the execution of the bridges funded by the World Bank was going smoothly and funds were being released from time to time.
The report divulged that in most of the bridges including Akhal and Tengchatri Bridge, the paucity of funds was causing delay in the completion of the execution and the JKPCC was unable to ensure timely completion of the bridges although for no fault of its own.
The report had further underlined that the Corporation was without any budgetary support of the Government and had to earn the administrative overheads, salary and wages out of the profit component of the projects under its execution.
With regard to Akhal Bridge and Tengchatri bridge whose pace of work was either at halt or low were put under languishing bridges and will be funded by Jammu & Kashmir Infrastructure Development Finance Corporation (JKIDFC).
The court was hearing a Public Interest Litigation filed by Samaj Sudhar committee of Tangchatri Kangan in 2011 through advocate Arshad Andrabi, seeking construction of bridges over Sindh Nallah at Tangchatri Akhal Kangan.
Advocate Salih Pirzada is assisting the court as Amicus Curiae.