Guwahati, May 18: The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) will suspend work on the Nagaon-Jorhat stretch of the East-West corridor till the government comes to a decision on the alignment of the road vis-à-vis Kaziranga National Park.

National Highway 37 passes through the national park and wildlife experts have opposed the move to construct the six-lane highway, fearing an adverse effect on animals.

“The work on that particular stretch of the highway has been suspended temporarily,” a senior official at the NHAI confirmed today.

He said the NHAI would take up work on the Jorhat-Demow section, avoiding the 160-km-long Nagaon-Jorhat stretch. “The process of selection of contractors for the Jorhat-Demow section started a few days ago,” he added. The decision to suspend work on the Nagaon-Jorhat stretch was taken after top officials of the ministry of surface transport visited Kaziranga a fortnight ago. The delegation also supervised the possibility of realigning the highway.

NHAI officials said they had two options to avoid the national park.

One, take the corridor from Nagaon via the north bank of the Brahmaputra at an additional cost of Rs 300 crore, as two more bridges would have to be constructed over the river.

“One bridge would be parallel to the existing Koliabhomora bridge and the other would be a 5km bridge from Gohpur to Numaligarh,” an official said.

The second option is to bypass the Kaziranga and move towards Upper Assam via Karbi Anglong hills on the southern fringe of the park through National Highway 39.

Kaziranga authorities preferred the second option, saying the East-West corridor would become a sort of boundary for the park and the forestland on the Karbi Anglong hills could be turned into extensions of the park.

The park authorities said the construction of the East-West corridor on the existing national highway would be a catastrophe for the Kaziranga animals.

The NHAI had Kaziranga in mind while planning the six-lane highway and had planned to construct an elevated highway on the stretch passing through the national park to ensure minimal impact on the wildlife.

The NHAI official said there were several technologies, such as crash barriers and noise barriers, which could have been used on this portion of the highway to ensure that animals in Kaziranga came to no harm.

“But it was up to the government to decide. We have to sacrifice a bit if we want development,” he said.