Bhubaneswar, May 11: Commuters will have to wait some more time to use the proposed ring road here with the project awaiting final approval from the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI).

While the Bhubaneswar Development Authority has finalised the roadmap for the project and made the alignments of the road network, it cannot proceed with land acquisition without the final consent of the NHAI since the road will cross National Highway No. 5 and other such properties at certain places.

The development authority has identified 760 acres to construct the proposed 65-km-long ring road at a cost of Rs 1,200 crore. The proposed ring road will connect major places, including Nandankanan in the north, Pahala in the east, Dahuli in the south and Tomando in the west sides of the city.

Moreover, the road can only be constructed after the NHAI includes the project in the list of National Highway Development Project phase-VIII.

While the state government has consented to provide the land free of cost and demarcated it, the construction of the road will be done in the public-private-partnership mode.

"It is essential to construct a ring road or bypass to distribute the traffic by integrating the national highway network of NH-5, NH-42, NH-224 and NH-203 that pass through the twin cities of Cuttack and Bhubaneswar. It will minimise the number of road accidents and shorten travel time," said a development authority official.

Sources said chief secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi had written to the chairman of the national highways authority to provide the approval.

"The chief secretary has reiterated about the project. We hope that the approval will come in time and we would be able to go ahead with the land acquisition," said the official.

A senior NHAI official told The Telegraph that the approval could only be provided by the headquarters in New Delhi. "We don't have the administrative power to give approval from here. It can only be done at the headquarters level. We received the request from the state government and will definitely communicate with the headquarters to expedite the process," he said.

The development authority's vice-chairman Krishan Kumar said the ring road project would be taken up on a priority, but there was also a need to follow the administrative process.

"We have come up with a list of lands to be acquired for the project and submitted them to the government. Land acquisition is a lengthy process. So, we need to start work as early as possible. We hope to get approval from the NHAI shortly," said Kumar.