Patna, Aug. 19: Decks have been cleared for construction of a Ganga Driveway, a 20.5-km-long four-lane road that would provide hassle-free connectivity between West and East Patna.
While the western end of the road would be near Digha Ghat, its eastern tip would be at Didarganj.
“The process of inviting bids for the project would be initiated within a fortnight,” road construction minister Nand Kishore Yadav told The Telegraph.
The Centre has already given “in-principle” approval for the project, he added.
Central approval is a must for the project as it is being implemented in the public-private-partnership (PPP) mode.
The total cost of the Ganga Driveway project is Rs 2,234.46 crore of which the Centre would provide 20 per cent of the project cost (Rs 446.89 crore). The same amount would be invested by the Bihar government.
The state would invest an additional Rs 116.6 crore that would go towards meeting the cost of land acquisition and shifting of other utility services.
According to rules, if any infrastructure project is implemented under the PPP mode, a maximum of 40 per cent of the project cost can be raised through Viability Gap Funding.
This is a scheme under which a part of the cost is shared equally by the Centre and the state concerned to make the project financially viable for a private investor.
The private investor, who would be selected for the project through competitive bidding, would have to invest a minimum of Rs 1,340.78 crore.
The driveway would have an elevated stretch (7.6-km-long) between Collectorate Ghat and Gai Ghat so that important existing structures such as the collectorate building, court building, Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH) and Darbhanga House are not disturbed due to construction of the road.
The design of the bridge will allow connectivity with the existing road (Ashok Rajpath) that runs parallel to the proposed driveway.
Apart from the western and eastern ends of the driveway, there would be eight additional points — Kurji More, Boring Canal Road, Magadh Mahila College, PMCH, Gai Ghat, Khajekala Ghat, Kangan Ghat and Patna Ghat — along the driveway. The link roads would originate from these points to connect the driveway with the existing road.
Special care was also taken to keep the land acquisition necessity to a minimum while deciding the alignment of the road. Of the total land requirement of 175.56 hectares, the state government would require acquisition of just 13 hectares of land.
As far as the remaining land is concerned, 157.7 hectares would come from land reclaimed from the river, 3.30 hectares from the state government and 1.56 hectares from the Centre.
According to project details, work on this road project would start in the financial year 2012-13 and would be completed by 2015-16.
Justifying the decision to take up such an ambitious project, which would be the first of its kind for Patna, minister Yadav said: “As there is no scope of further widening of existing roads, it is necessary to look for new roads which could cope with the increased vehicular load in the city.”
The driveway, Yadav said, would also lessen travel time. “The four-lane road would also reduce time taken from going from the western end to the eastern end of the city. The new road would bring down the travel time from the existing two hours to just 25 minutes,” he said.
About the likelihood of private investors showing interest in such a project, the road construction minister said there should be no problem as private investors had already started investing in the road sector.
His claim appears justified as private investors have already committed to invest in two major projects being executed under the PPP mode in Bihar.
The first such investment has come in a bridge project (Bakhtiyarpur-Tajpur) where, of the total project cost of Rs 1,602.74 crore, the private investor is investing Rs 917.74 crore. Another private investment of Rs 619 crore has come in construction of the Ara-Mohania road which has a cost component of Rs 1,077 crore.
