Ranchi, Oct. 13: Officials have hit a dead end in their last-minute rush to spruce up at least seven key roads in the capital in time for the November 21 National Games with no contractors opting for tenders floated by the state administration.

Most officials in the state road construction department have thrown up their hands. Sources revealed that they all agreed it would be next to impossible to ready the seven stretches — some of them were in a pitiable state — if the tenders weren’t finalised within the next two days.

“We had invited tenders to spruce up the roads last month. But, not a single contractor responded to take up the individual projects to be executed in and around Ranchi,” said a worried Vijay Kumar, the engineer-in-chief of the department. “If we get contractors by October 15, we can expect roads to be set right before the Games,” he added.

The total cost of repairing the seven stretches comes to Rs 3 crore that was to be sanctioned under the department’s emergency non-plan head.

Among the stretches that needed urgent attention were Patel chowk (railway station road) to Kanta Toli chowk, Lalpur chowk to Kokar chowk — it’s in an extremely poor condition — Old Hazaribagh road and Lalganj-Tatisilwai road (see box).

Kumar conceded they were now urgently contacting contractors who were apparently put off by the tight deadline being insisted upon by the department. On why the department didn’t act earlier, he claimed they had invited tenders last month too, but late monsoon rain played spoilsport.

For Ranchi though, all wasn’t lost yet. The most important road, from Kanta Toli chowk to Jumar river bridge in the north and to Namkum in the south, was being fixed by the National Highway (NH) wing of the road construction department. The executive engineer of the NH wing, Rajesh Kumar Gupta, said they had given the Rs 1.8 crore work of resurfacing both the stretches — a total of 8km — to a construction company owned by one Arvind Singh.

Kanta Toli is the entry point for the state capital for vehicles coming from Jamshedpur, Purulia, Ramgarh and Hazaribagh, while the stretch between Patel chowk to Kanta Toli is lined with hotels where several VVIPS are likely to be put up during the Games.