Tripura demands remodelling of Bharat Nirman guidelines

Agartala, May 28 (UNI) The Tripura government has demanded to reduce the population criteria for construction of new roads to connect the remote villages with national or district highways in Northeastern states.

Talking to mediapersons here today, state Finance Minister Badal Choudhury said according to the Central government norms, villages with population of at least 500 would be connected by road link.

However, he stated that in the NE states, there were thousands of villages which needed to be connected with surface transport links but had a population of less than 500.

''As per the mandate of Bharat Nirman programme remote villages and clusters would be connected with transport link. However, the population criteria for the NE states would have to be reduced to 250 and only then it could yield the expected results,'' Mr Choudhury said.

He said the state had spent Rs 250 crore in the fiscal 2007-08 under Bharat Nirman programme and Rs 300 crore was targetted for the current fiscal in road building work and the proposal had already been sent to the Surface Transport Ministry and the Planning Commission.

Meanwhile, Mr Choudhury said the Centre had also sanctioned double-lane road projects for six sub-divisions, which were connected with NH 44 while the highway would be four-lane and added that the state would host a high-level expert meeting of PWD officials of NE states regarding Bharat Nirman programme where representatives and technocrats would participate on June 4-5.

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