SURAJ NANDREKAR
suraj@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: With two accidents in last three days, one fatal, the people of Chimbel are up in arms against the lethargic approach of the State government, which has led to lives of innocent citizens being lost and the politicians do not seem to care a bit about the same.
Strange are the ways of this government’s functioning. While some projects get completed, sometimes even without the proper acquisition of land, others are left incomplete for no valid reasons whatsoever.
For the last five and a half years, the Chimbel flyover on the four-lane Kadamba highway – which is needed due to the frequent number of accidents – has been left incomplete.
The ambitious four-laning of the Panjim-Old Goa bypass corridor project, which was taken up at an estimated cost of Rs 280 crore, is yet to be completed due to the pending construction of the flyover near the Chimbel-Ribandar junction since 2014.
Officials of Venkatrao Infrastructure Limited informed Herald that the work is not complete due to the land acquisition that has been pending for the last two years.
Investigations revealed that the government has no plans to go ahead with the project as it is under litigation. On inquiring further, it was understood that two individuals have moved the High Court challenging the land acquisition.
After laying the piers on one side of the junction and spending crores of rupees, PWD now wants to rework the project. “We have sent a detailed proposal with estimates to the central government and we have been told that the project has been sanctioned by NHAI,” a PWD official informed Herald.
Asked why the project was abandoned after spending several crores of the exchequer money, he said, “The project is under litigation and hence we cannot move ahead. We have thus decided to redo the entire project.”
Questioned about what would be the new alignment for the project, he replied saying, “That is still under process. But one thing is for sure, the current project cannot go ahead due to various reasons.”
When Herald contacted Nitin Neurenkar, OSD for the PWD Minister, he simply stated that the case is in the High Court, as one local has gone to court. “We are waiting for the court to vacate the stay and once that is done we will complete the project,” he added.
In April 2015, the then PWD Minister Ramkrishna (Sudin) Dhavalikar had given an assurance in the State Legislative Assembly, that work on the model corridor, which includes this flyover, would be completed in May 2016.
Only three pillars have been erected so far by the contractor at the construction site. The actual work of constructing the pillars for the flyover commenced in 2015.
