Ranchi, May 21: Chief minister Raghubar Das this morning inspected a 6km dilapidated stretch of road from Booty More to Kantatoli Chowk, stepping down from his car at least a couple of times to check out potholes, becoming the talking point in a city where IPL is the ruling flavour now.
Das, who went to Booty More straight from his Kanke Road residence, and traversed the entire length of the pothole-ridden road till Kantatoli Chowk from 10am to 10.30am, characteristically did not waste time issuing instructions. From the spot itself, he asked his accompanying officials to call up road construction secretary Rajbala Verma, directing immediate repairs.
Then Das, accompanied by his political adviser Ajay Kumar, went straight to Project Building for a normal workday.
"The government is serious about maintaining the quality of roads in the state. There were specific complaints about the stretch between Booty More and Kanta Toli Chowk, which is why I went to personally check the situation. I directed road construction department officials to ensure its repair as soon as possible," Das told The Telegraph.
Road construction has received the message. Around noon, a high-level road construction department delegation, led by its secretary Verma, superintending engineers Vijay Kumar Shrivastava and Vinay Prakash Singh swooped down on the spot to do a survey on how potholes could be filled up at the earliest.
A road construction department source said they would immediately take up minor repair work of Rs 3 lakh to Rs 4 lakh to fill up at least six big potholes and many smaller ones. But, this apart, a major repair work is only on cards, said engineer Shrivastava.
"We will take up reconstruction project of the entire length between Vikas Vidyalaya and Rampur, a distance of over 20km, under which Booty More-Kanta Toli Chowk also falls. For this project of Rs 125 crore, state road construction department will float a tender in the near future," Shrivastava said.
But, the state is not fully to be blamed for the dilapidated stretch between Booty More and Kantatoli Chowk. Owned by National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), it is currently neglected. NHAI is the executing a road-widening project between Ranchi and Jamshedpur, but the new alignment of this project does not include the road between Booty More and Kanta Toli Chowk. Rather, it is a greenfield alignment which is an offshoot from a place near Vikas Vidyalaya, beyond Booty More, and Rampur, on the outskirts of the city, that will connect two flanks of National Highways-33, Hazaribagh Road and Ranchi-Jamshedpur Road.
But, as the project would take over a year from now to get complete, Booty More-Kanta Toli Chowk stretch remains the main link to connect Ranchi with Hazaribagh and Jamshedpur. Yet, in the wake of the new alignment, the NHAI no longer takes care of Booty More-Kanta Toli stretch. "As we are busy with the widening work, we can't maintain or manage the stretch. We have recently given a no-objection certificate to the state government, saying the road construction department can repair the stretch," said NHAI senior official in Ranchi, M.K. Pandey.
However, Pandey was silent on when the NHAI would ultimately hand over the road to the state.
