Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway to be ready by year end

New Delhi, July 30: Work on 6/8 laning, a key section of National Highway 18 that links the capital to the bustling business hub of Gurgaon, the Delhi airport as well as far away Rajasthan and the financial capital Mumbai would be over by the year end, says the Government.

The information -- likely to be hailed by motorists and passengers subjected to merciless traffic jams on the under-construction route -- was provided by Minister of State for Shipping, Road Transport and Highways K H Muniyappa in the Lok Sabha earlier this week.

Additional works on the route, including flyovers, were expected to be completed by June next year, he said in a written reply during Question Hour on Wednesday. These included the Rao Tula Ram Marg-Palam flyover on which only 40 per cent of the works had been completed.

Work on six other flyovers were nearing completion while it had already been completed on the Rajeev Chowk and Rajokri flyovers.

The Minister said the total cost of the project had shot up by Rs 155 crore because of delays caused due to changes in scope of work, delay in transfer of government land and delay in financial closure of the project.

The project, being executed on build-operate-transfer basis, was to be completed by July 2005.

He said a Detailed Project Report for construction of 135 km-long Eastern Peripheral Expressway (Kundli-Ghaziabad-Noida-Palwal) was under preparation. The project was scheduled to start in October 2007 and was expected to be completed in three years' time.

The Government was planning construction of nearly 1,000 km of expressways under Phase VI of the National Highway Development Programme over the next few years. These projects, in the planning stage at present, would be completed by 2015-16, he said.

To another unstarred question, the Minister informed the House that work on widening the Delhi-Hapur-Lucknow National Highway No 24. was in various stages of completion.

UNI