Come second half of 2016, and you can travel from Srinagar to Kanyakumari at an average speed of 100 km an hour as the road ministry will complete the 4,076-km corridor between the two places by then at a total cost of close to R40,000 crore. Existing roads facilitate driving at 30-40 km an hour.
Southern part of the corridor that traverses through Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka before culminating at Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu?a stretch of 1,900 km–is complete but a small portion of 550 metres that was till last month stuck in litigation.
The case pertains to building of road on a pond at Narikulam village in Kanyakumari. The village society had approached the local court claiming ownership of the pond, resulting in work getting stalled. The matter had later reached Supreme Court.
Hearing a special leave petition of National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) on February 27 the Supreme Court gave a clean chit to construction of road on the pond. NHAI is the implementing agency of the corridor. A senior official of NHAI said, ?The case was the last hurdle in completion of southern stretch of the corridor. The work is now likely to be complete by the end of next year.?
In Jammu & Kashmir, NHAI has awarded construction work of160 km to private concessionaires, while a stretch of 79 km is still to be bid out. But NHAI officials are confident of completing the pending work by middle of 2016. ?It won?t take longer than that,? another senior official of the authority said.
Most stretches of the north-south corridor are four-laned and allow charging of toll by concessionaires. However, at some points traffic is not commensurate for recovery of capital cost. P Alagiri, acting team leader for 80-km portion between Karur and Dendugal in Tamil Nadu, said ?nearly 14,000 passenger car units cross the Karur toll plaza but 10,000 of them are government vehicles and don?t need to pay toll. So, only 4,000 PCUs ?pay toll. For recovery of costs, traffic of at least 20,000 PCUs is required.?
