Problems with land acquisition and environmental clearances have delayed 58 ongoing national highways projects, including 18 in Assam, seven in Jammu and Kashmir and five each in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, said the ministry of road transport and highways in response to a written question.
The projects which are facing delay due to land issues are in Rajasthan (4) and two each in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, it said.
According to the roads ministry, the completion target of the projects is ??revised wherever necessary depending upon the constraints/bottlenecks and resolutions thereof??. The roads ministry is also preparing a detailed project report (DPR) for a 400-km Vadodara-Mumbai Expressway. This project is part of government?s plans of building over 1,000 km of expressways on public-private-partnership (PPP) mode under its flagship road building programme NHDP, entailing an investment of R16,680 crore.
It is understood that the feasibility study of the Vadodara-Mumbai Expressway was to be completed by October 2009. However, there were delays as in course of feasibility study additional length of about 94 km had to be added for connectivity between NH-4 and JNPT within outer Mumbai region in Maharashtra.
