SPV for dealing with damages to Highways in T'Nadu and West Bengal

New Delhi, Nov 21 (UNI) Road Transport and Highways Minister T R Baalu today reviewed the large-scale damages to National Highways 34 and 66 caused by the recent torrential rains in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu and decided to form a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to tackle damages to highways due to calamities like rainfall and landslides.

Mr Baalu, who reviewed the situation at a high-level meeting attended by senior officers of his ministry and the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), said the formation of the SPV, in tandem with the affected states, would be an effective mechanism for dealing with the damages to highways caused by natural calamities.

He said the SPV would be formed by his ministry and the NHAI with active support from the state government concerned to ensure that the National Highways, affected by natural calamities, are restored quickly and work of emergent repairs be taken up immediately.

Large-scale damages have been reported at various places on the Barasat-Behrampore-Farakka-Raiganj-Dalkola stretch on NH-34 falling in districts of Nadia, Murshidabad and Malda in West Bengal because of torrential rains during the last two months.

It was pointed out by the officials that the financial requirement for undertaking the repair work on these stretches would far exceed the normal budgetary allocation earmarked for this kind of calamity.

Similar damages have been reported on the Tindivanum-Puduchery stretch of NH-66, particularly road at Kiliyanoor, and the Coimbatore-Mettupalayam-Ooty-Karnataka border on NH-67 Ext in Tamil Nadu.

The worst-affected patches on these stretches include Merapalam to Kargudi and Mettupalayam to Ooty.

It was pointed out at the meeting that heavy landslides, triggered by continuous rains in the area, had resulted in diversion of vehicular traffic to Mettupalayam-Kothagiri road instead of Mettupalayam-Ooty road.

In view of the severe damages to the National Highways in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, Mr Baalu ordered that the SPV be formed separately for the two states.

UNI SKS HS KN1547