Patna, Oct. 30: A road maintenance policy is on its way to Bihar. If implemented, the policy would introduce toll tax on those using the state highways.

According to the proposal, details of which are being worked out by the road construction department, the state highways which have been built over the past five-six years would be awarded to concessionaires on competitive bidding for undertaking maintenance work for a certain period. Those awarded the work would be given the right to collect toll from users.

“We are thinking in these terms as maintaining the roads is a big challenge and the new system would allow generation of funds for this purpose. We intend to give these roads on operate-maintain-transfer basis,” road construction minister Nand Kishore Yadav told The Telegraph. He, however, made it clear that it was just a proposal and any final decision on this front would be taken after due consultation.

Bihar has witnessed a sea change in quality of state highways in the past six years leading to increased traffic flow on the roads. Most of the roads, which were earlier single-lane and in dilapidated condition, have now been converted into two-lane roads. In addition to this, many new roads have been notified as state highways during this period and construction work on many of these newly notified roads are underway.

Two central agencies — CPWD and Ircon — are undertaking construction of 2,038km of those state highways, which were already in existence. In case of newly notified roads, work on first phase of construction of 820km of state highways is in different stages. While some have been completed, work is still going on in some of these roads. These are likely to be completed by end of 2012.

Tender process of another 354km of newly notified state highways under phase-II has been completed and these would be ready for use in the next two years. The state highways to be developed under the third phase of construction are 284km in length and tender process for these roads would be started soon.

Asian Development Bank has given soft loan for construction of first two phases of state highways and the bank has given in principal an approval for giving soft loan for third phase roads as well.

In addition to these roads, the state government in September this year, notified another 867km of different categories of roads as state highways. These too would be developed as two-lane roads.