K'taka: PM to lay foundation for elevated highway

Bangalore, Jun 22: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will lay the foundation stone for the Rs 450 crore, ten-laned, 9.985 km mixed corridor elevated highway project, the first of its kind in the country, aimed at solving the traffic woes on the Bangalore-Hosur section of NH-7, on June 24.

Union Minister of State for Surface Transport K H Muniyappa told a press conference here that the Bangalore-Hosur section of NH-7, one of the busiest sections in the country, was choked due to tremendous growth of industries, particularly the IT sector.

He said the industries located on Bangalore-Hosur section were contributing almost Rs 50,000 crore to Rs 60,000 crore to the national economy annually. But due to infrastructure problems, the industries were suffering in many ways, including loss of man-hours, job attrition, dwindling growth opportunities, besides losing their global competitiveness.

The Minister said the elevated project work consisted of a nine-km-long four-lane elevated highway from Silk Board junction in the city to Electronic City, improvement of grade section between 18.765 km and 18.75 km and expansion of the section between 18.75 km to 33.13 km to six lanes.

Mr Muniyappa said the project would be executed by a consortium of three companies on a Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) basis within 24 months. The entire project would be executed, maintained and operated by the consortium and the Government would not have any stake in terms of investment. The developers themselves would fund the entire project and recover the investment from users of the highway by charging user fee. In this project, the concessionaire, instead of demanding money from the Government to bridge the viability gap, had offered a negative grant of Rs 16 crore to the National Highways Authority of India.

He said the launch of the project was delayed with the Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprises moving the Karnataka High Court as the project rubbed the Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor project being developed by it. The issue had been settled before the court and there was no hitch in starting the elevated project now.

He said the Prime Minsiter would also launch the Rs 6,395 crore Bangalore Metro project, funded by the Japanese Bank for International Cooperation. The seven-km first phase of the mega project would see the light of the day by 2009.

UNI