After inordinate delay, the National highway authority of India (NHAI) has invited bids for the construction of ring road in Kashmir with an estimated cost of Rs 1903 crore.
A top NHAI official told Greater Kashmir over phone that “NHAI on Friday invited bids for construction of ring road in Kashmir. The bid for Kashmir’s ring road was part of national level bids invited for 10,460 km, costing Rs 1.75,000 crore across India.”
He informed that bids for the ring road around Jammu city have been finalized and letter of award issued on 20/12/2017 and appointed date will be issued after possession of 90% land by NHAI.
“Approximately 12450 kanals and 14 marlas of land is to be acquired for construction of Semi Ring Roads around Jammu and Srinagar City, out of which 10911 kanals and 13 marlas are agricultural land,” the official document reveals.
According to the detailed project report of the ring road accessed by Greater Kashmir, the proposed Ring Road project for Srinagar will start at Galander and meet the highway at Narbal Junction in its Phase-I.
The road will be 4-lane with 6-lane future projection. Under the Phase-II of the project, a two-way road will start at Narbal and meet in Ganderbal.
The project is likely to cost Rs. 1195 crores in Phase-I and Rs. 448 crores in the Phase-II. The road length in the Phase-I will be 34.72 kilometers and in the Phase-II, 27.2 kilometers. There will be a Toll Plaza at Narbal Junction. In the proposed 4-lane road project from Galander to Narbal there will be 155 culverts, two road-over bridges, two flyovers, five major junctions, 17 minor junctions and one Toll Plaza. The two-lane road from Narbal to Ganderbal will have 135 culverts, 5 major junctions and 9 minor junctions.
The projects should keep room for widening from 4-lanes to 6-lanes and from 2-lanes to 4-lanes to cater to futuristic needs.
Similarly in Jammu 4-lane Ring Road involving an expenditure of Rs. 1355 crore will have with one Toll Plaza in each of the homogenous sections. It will start near Vijaypur (Raipur) and meet the National Highway at Akhnoor where from it will go up to Nagrota Bye-Pass. The road project will be about 60 kilometers in length. It will have 4 major bridges in Package-I and 4 similar bridges in package-II while the number of minor bridges in Package-I will be 5 and 4 in Package-II. The number of culverts in Package-I will be 215 and in Package-II 102. There will be two flyovers in each package while as two overhead bridges will be constructed in the Package-II.
Under the Package-I the road length from Raipur to Akhnoor will be 43 kilometers and in Package-II it will be 16.9 kilometers.