Chief minister Nitish Kumar on Thursday asked the road construction department to finalise the ring road project alignment only after the new master plan gets the last approval from the state cabinet.

Nitish instructed the department to coordinate the project with the department involved in formulating the master plan. The plan, which the Patna Metropolitan Planning Committee has approved, will be now implemented after the state cabinet nodded to it on Thursday.

According to the master plan, Patna will be spread over 1,167sqkm out of which 400sqkm will be green cover. Over 600sqkm has been marked as urban, which includes two satellite towns to cater to urbanisation and population growth in the next two decades. Further, it has been proposed that over 16 per cent of the total area will be used for roads.

The city ring-road project has been planned to divert heavy vehicles and get done with bottlenecks.

An engineer present during Thursday's meeting said: "A PowerPoint presentation was made before the chief minister on the ring road project and other road projects. The presentations were made on all the proposals and alignments, including the added Bihta-Daniyawan-Sarmera state highway-78 and Kachchi Dargah to Bidupur that will be part of the ring road. However, Nitish Kumar said the ring road alignment should be finalised once the new master plan is formulated."

The plan, which has been prepared by the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT), Ahmedabad, would include Bihta, Danapur, Khagaul, Daniyawan, Fatuha, Khusrupur, Maner, Masaurhi, Naubatpur, Phulwarisharif, Punpun and Sampatchak blocks. The plan area has been divided into seven zones - residential, commercial, mixed land, industrial, public and semi-public land, urban agriculture zones and no-development zones.

The ring road alignments, which came up for discussion, have been made on the basis of many projects, proposed or underway, and entails construction of connecting roads to link the upcoming or proposed roads.

After the meeting, deputy chief minister Tejashwi said: "More meetings likely before we reach at a concrete decision. Today, our department made presentations and the chief minister suggested a few things. We will go with his suggestions."

The Centre will execute the ring road project once the Bihar road construction department finalises the alignment and send a detailed project report to the National Highways Authority of India.

The ring road will take shape after the state highways and major district roads are connected with the national highways.

The objective of the new master plan is to sustain the population growth for around 20 years. Similarly, the road construction department is working on a Bihar road master plan to ensure efficient rural roads for the next 20 years based on traffic density and available road width.