For a smooth ride

Patna, April 13: The Bihar government has decided to raise the issue of declaring 36 more roads as national highways in the state before the Centre. Road construction minister Nand Kishore Yadav has written a letter to the Union minister of road transport and highway C.P. Joshi seeking time for discussing the issue with him this month itself.

The state’s demand for declaring more roads as national highways is not new. The road construction department had sent its last letter to the Centre in this regard in June 2010, but nothing has been done so far.

The letter had details of the roads the state thinks should be declared as national highways on the basis of the pressure of traffic on them. The letter talked about 36 roads measuring 2690.95km in length for being declared as national highways. For north Bihar, 1278.6km of national highway was demanded. The demand for south Bihar was 1412.35km.

The demand of the state government seems to be justified. Bihar, the third most populous state of the country, stands at 27th rank in the list of 35 states and Union territories as far as availability of national highway for every one lakh population. Against the national average of 6.86km of national highway for every one lakh population, Bihar has a network of 4.4km of national highway for the same number of people.

The state gained prominently in terms of length of national highway between 1999 and 2004 when the Centre declared 2362.3km of new roads as national highways. Prior to 1999, the state had 1266.7 km of national highway. From 2005 till date, just 105km were added to the list of national highway, leading to such a low rank for the state.

“The UPA government in the Centre has chosen to ignore our repeated demands but we will not sit silently and keep on raising this issue at every possible occasion as people of the state suffer because of such discrimination,” Yadav told The Telegraph.

The minister is hopeful that the Centre would pay heed to the state’s demand for more highways sooner than latter.

“I have come to know that the Centre is planning to declare 10,000km of roads as national highway across the country. I will urge the Union minister in my meeting with him to give Bihar its due share,” Yadav said.

The state road construction minister said the issue of non-reimbursement of over Rs 900 crore by the Centre to Bihar would also be raised during the meeting. The Bihar government spent the money between 2006-07 and 2010-11 for the upkeep of the national highways passing through the state.