By Neeraj Kumar
Patna: Damaged rural roads will be repaired before the Bihar assembly elections. On the initiative of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, the Rural Works Department has prepared an action plan for the repair of dilapidated rural roads. At present, the department is working on a plan to improve 8,332 km of rural roads. These will be made sparkling within a year and will be repaired in various phases. Currently, work is ongoing on 1,668 km.
Additional Chief Secretary of Rural Works Department, Deepak Kumar Singh, stated that the government is very serious about rural roads. Along with building new roads, they are also working on a plan to repair dilapidated roads, as maintenance of rural roads is one of their top priorities.
The Rural Works Department has prepared a comprehensive action plan. After examining all the rural roads already built, a list was prepared for repairs under the Chief Minister Rural Road Upgradation Scheme. After a comprehensive survey, the department has selected 10,000 kilometers under this scheme. According to the department, the Mukhyamantri Gramin Sadak Unnayan Yojana has been implemented to repair extremely damaged roads whose design period (life span) has been completed or have been damaged before that.
Along with reconstruction and strengthening of roads, a plan for their widening has also been included in this scheme, but the priority is to repair dilapidated roads. A budgetary provision of Rs 500 crore was made last year. Also, a plan to immediately improve 1,668 km of roads was approved. Now, work is ongoing to improve 403 roads with a plan of about Rs 1,500 crore. Along with upgrading these dilapidated roads, the department will also identify other dilapidated rural roads. For this, a list of such roads will be made by running a campaign in all the districts.
Construction work of new rural roads is also ongoing in Bihar. The target was to provide connectivity to 129,290 settlements. For this, 129,156 km of roads are to be constructed. So far, the department has provided single connectivity to 118,458 settlements, constructing 115,228 km of roads. After the construction of these roads, work has begun on the plan to connect 10,832 settlements with road connectivity, with 13,928 km of roads currently being constructed.
The author is a Patna based journalist
