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'National highways being upgraded'

A project is underway to provide 'riding quality' to all the national highways and other roads in the country in two years, Surface Transport Minister Rajnath Singh said today.

Replying to supplementaries in the Rajya Sabha (Upper House of Parliament), Singh admitted that there was a need to upgrade and develop roads that comprised about 40,000 km in the country. The government, he said, had undertaken a project under which it would ensure that all roads had the riding quality within two years.

Under the National Highway Development Project, he said a total of 13,252 km of roads would be covered - 5,952 km under the Golden Quadrilateral connecting the metropolitan cities of Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta and Madras with four-to six-lane roads, and 7,300 km under the north-south and east-west corridors.

On the Golden Quadrilateral, 558 km had already been four-laned and work on 712 km was under progress. On the north-south and east-west corridors, 630 km was already four-laned and work on 272 km was under progress, Singh said.

While assuring that there would be no shortage of funds for completing these projects which were targetted to be ready by 2003 (Golden Quadrilateral) and 2009 (north-south and east-west corridors), he said.

In the current budget, an outlay of Rs 20.10 billion had been made for the project.

In reply to a specific question, Singh also informed that all major ports would be connected with national highways on which the government would be spending Rs 40 billion to lay about 1,000 km of roads.

He said that efforts were on to provide connectivity with national highways within 50 km to each location.

UNI

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