Patna: Work on the eastern section of the ambitious Ganga driveway project began in Patna on Tuesday.

"Till now work was going on only on the western section of the driveway," road construction minister Nand Kishore Yadav said. "Today, I got work started from Nazaur to Nuruddin Ghat."

He said the 20.5km stretch would be completed in another two years.

The original cost of the driveway project was estimated at Rs 2,160 crore. But it has now shot up to Rs 3,390 crore because of the elevation. "Cost of land acquisition and elevation account for the cost," the minister said.

The Ganga driveway is a long-pending project of Patna.

Mooted in the early 1990s, with space earmarked on both flanks for educational institutes, parks and commercial complexes, the ambitious project got a final nod in 2013.

"The tenders were called during my previous tenure as road construction minister but were opened during my successor's tenure," recalled Nand Kishore, pointing out that the redesigned project had actually saved the government money from land-acquisition as a large portion of the mega project is now elevated.

Also, the length of the project was shortened by 1km and as of now more than 11km of the road will be elevated while the rest will be along the Ganga river.

The driveway would end near the southern end of the upcoming six-lane Kacchi-Dargah to Bidupur bridge. Hyderabad-based Navayuga Engineering Company Ltd is executing the project.

The new drive-way design keeps open the option to extend it till Fatuha and allows for connectivity to PMCH - besides keeping in mind that Ganga is a favourite place for Chhath devotees. There will be 13 underpasses to help people access the Ganga, especially during Chhath.

"In the new design, there is provision for special connectivity to PMCH," Nand Kishore had said on Monday. "As you know, earlier there was some problem with the design of the driveway. We've ensured that in the amended design there is need for less land acquisition and the elevated portion is constructed in such a way that the course of the river Ganga gets affected the least."

The project, once complete, will go a long way in decongesting traffic.

Work was stalled because of various reasons over the past four-and-a-half years but now the department has set a new date for completion of the work: June 2020.

The project got government sanction on March 30, 2013, and was supposed to have got over by September 8, 2017, but problems in acquiring land and design, not to forget political instability in Bihar, delayed the project.

One major change that has been carried out vis-a-vis the project is shortening of the length of the driveway from 21.5km to 20.5km.

The road on the embankment would have a 5m wide space towards the river to be used as a footpath.

A total of 115 acres is to be acquired for the project, of which 32 acres is private land.

The driveway along the southern bank of the Ganga will reduce travel time between Digha Ghat and Didarganj from two hours to only 25 minutes. It will also ease traffic congestion in Patna.

Bihar State Road Development Corporation Ltd, the nodal agency for executing the project, is responsible for timely completion of the project.