New Delhi, Sept. 4: The Delhi-Calcutta corridor of the Golden Quadrilateral National Highway project is lagging behind other sections with as much as 32 per cent of the stretch yet to be completed.

This is in contrast to the Delhi-Mumbai section of the project where 99 per cent of the work has been done.

Official figures reveal that the work on the four or six laning of the Calcutta-Chennai corridor section is progressing at a relatively quicker pace with 15 per cent of the stretch remaining to be finished. The same percentage of the Mumbai-Chennai section is also pending completion.

The law and order situation in Bihar has been a major hurdle for the Delhi-Calcutta leg of the Golden Quadrilateral with contractors finding themselves at the receiving end of local mafias. On certain stretches, lack of requisite technical expertise and resources on the part of contractors is holding up the work.

In 2003-04, work could be done only on 12 km of the highway project in Bihar.

Last year, 92 km could be completed. Even this was far behind the progress in states such as Karnataka, where 227 km were four or six laned, and Rajasthan, where work was completed on a 235-km stretch. Orissa did better than Bihar, managing to complete 179 km in two years.

Bengal also performed poorly in 2003-04 as only 35 km of the corridor could be upgraded. However, the momentum picked up in the following year when work on 254 km was completed. In these two years, the state had spent Rs 677 crore and Rs 954 crore respectively on civil construction equipment.

The pace of work also depended on the efficiency of the state governments in resolving problems related to land acquisitions, removal of utilities such as electricity poles and getting timely environmental clearances.

The government claims to have completed about 84 per cent of the work on the 5,846-km Delhi-Calcutta-Chennai-Mumbai-Delhi stretch. It is targeting to complete 92 per cent of the work by the end of this year and 96 per cent by June next. This will leave only 4 per cent of the project to be done.

The unfinished stretches will include Bihar where some contracts have been cancelled due to non-performance and work on the 84-km Allahabad bypass that was awarded in 2004.