Patna: The Centre on Thursday upgraded the 15km approach road to the proposed four-lane bridge parallel to Vikramshila Setu over the Ganga at Bhagalpur to national highway status, thus clearing an obstacle for its construction.
The Centre give in-principle approval for constructing of the bridge costing Rs 1,700 crore. This is the second gift from the Centre after the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) on Wednesday gave it's nod to start construction of a six-lane bridge parallel to Rajendra Setu in Mokama over the Ganga at Rs 1,161 crore.
"The biggest obstacle to the bridge was that the road did not fall under national highway category," road construction department minister Nand Kishore Yadav told The Telegraph. "The Centre always connects national highway with national highway and the approach road of this project was not a national highway on the Naugachia side. Because of this obstacle, we were not getting approval but now the Centre has called a 15km approach road of this project a national highway. With this we have achieved the dream of constructing a bridge parallel to Vikramshila Setu."
Nand Kishore said the issue was raised a few days back when he met Union minister for road, transport and highways Nitin Gadkari in the presence of chief minister Nitish Kumar. Nitish had also appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on October 14, 2017, for construction of a four-lane bridge parallel to the Setu when Modi was visiting Mokama to take part in a function.
As things stands now, the existing Setu is in bad shape and there is constant traffic congestion, even on the approach road. In 2016, Nitish was himself caught in a traffic jam.
Ahead of the 2015 Assembly elections in Bihar, Narendra Modi had announced a special package of Rs 1.65 lakh crore for Bihar of which Rs 55,000 crore was to be spent on roads and bridges.
On October 14, 2017, Modi said in Mokama that road projects worth Rs 53,000 crore out of Rs 55,000 crore, sanctioned for the road sector in a special package for Bihar, had either been completed or were under way. He even said Bihar had possibly not seen so many roads being built in ages.
"The total length of the bridge is 15 km and of main bridge 4.367 km," Nand Kishore said. "The approach road toward Bhagalpur side (NH 80) is .978kmand toward Naugachia side (NH 31) 8.964km. We need to acquire 52 acres of private land. The project will be executed by Bihar Rajya Pul Nirman Nigam Ltd and its detail project report (DPR) is already prepared."
He said that once the four-lane bridge is completed, traffic in Bhagalpur city will become smooth and vehicles will easily enter from Jharkhand and Calcutta too.