Cuttack, Sept. 9: A petition filed in Orissa High Court has expressed apprehension that construction of the 59km of four-lane national highway between Bhubaneswar and Puri, which was supposed to be completed by September 2013, might not be ready even before the Nabakalebara of Lord Jagannath in July 2015.

The petition has sought the court’s intervention for completion of the road project as it will be needed to deal with the huge rush of devotees to Puri on the occasion of Nabakalebara. Traffic will increase exponentially in 2015 when lakhs visit the temple town to witness Nabakalebara or renewal of the wooden images of Lord Jagannath and his siblings. The last Nabakalebara was held in 1996.

The present single-lane NH-203 gets jammed during festivals. The petition, filed by way of public interest litigation by Nishikant Mishra, an advocate of the high court, had cited on the basis of information assessed through RTI that the project work was being delayed due to pending court cases.

The division bench of Chief Justice Amitava Roy and Justice A.K. Rath, before which the petition came up on Saturday, adjourned the matter for hearing along with details of the pending cases. The court expected the petitioner to submit the details within a week.

The Bhubaneswar-Puri four-lane national highway project has been undertaken by a consortium that would invest Rs 500.29 crore along with a National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) grant of Rs 193.78 crore as viability gap funding to facilitate the construction. The project is to run on design, build, finance, operate and transfer mode. After 29 years, the operator will hand over the project to the NHAI.

The 59km stretch of the four-lane highway project includes four bypasses at Bhubaneswar, Pipili, Chandanpur and Bata Mangala, one railway over bridge, three major bridges and 18 minor bridges.

Initially, September 2013 was fixed as the deadline for completing the project. “Though one year has passed from the scheduled completion period, 40 per cent of work is yet to be completed apart from the repair of one major old bridge (Daya), the railway overbridge and the Puri bypass,” the petitioner said alleging lack of co-ordination between NHAI and state government officials.

The petitioner further alleged that the NHAI was reluctant to repair roads passing through Pipili, Chandanpur and Bata Mangala. The road passing through Pipili town is now in a dilapidated state, the petition said, seeking the court’s intervention.