Shillong, Sept. 4: It might take some more years for the much-awaited Shillong Bypass to become a reality if the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) sticks to its original plan of building a four-lane bypass.

The detailed project report for a four-lane road, which is being prepared by the NHAI, is likely to be completed this year. The state government faces the Herculean task of acquiring a swathe of land 21 metres wide and 50 km long for this purpose, once the report is ready.

The state government acquired the land needed for this purpose almost four years ago. The cost for this was nearly Rs 8 crore. The land acquisition was carried out keeping in view a two-lane bypass road. But the NHAI had different plans and its studies are based on a four-lane road, with an estimated budget of Rs 300 crore.

The project is caught between these two proposals — two-lane and four-lane — and is not getting off the block.

More than a decade has passed since the proposal for a bypass connecting National Highways 40 and 44 from Umroi to Mawryngkrneng, bypassing Shillong, was sent to the Union ministry of surface transport.

The proposed 50-km-long bypass will start from Umroi (along the Guwahati-Shillong Road) in Ri Bhoi district and serve as a connector for National Highway 44 near Mawryngkrneng, 25 km from the state capital. While NH 40 starts at Khanapara and ends in Shillong, NH 44 starts in Shillong and ends at Silchar.

Meghalaya additional chief secretary S. Chatterjee said the state government wrote to Union minister T.R. Balu, who held the road transport and national highways portfolio, requesting him to change the four-lane road to a two-lane one. It also suggested that this two-lane highway could be upgraded later.

The bypass, it is hoped, will come as a boon for Shillong where, owing to the untrammelled growth in the number of vehicles, traffic snarls have become the order of the day. The volume of traffic in and around Shillong has increased fourfold in less than a decade.

Frequent road accidents have become quite common in and around Shillong as the arterial route is not wide enough to accommodate the ever-increasing traffic.

Many NGOs have been repeatedly exerting pressure on the government to expedite work on the bypass.