The Uttarakhand tourism department would reinitiate the entire bidding process for its most prestigious Mussoorie ropeway project which is being revised to give it a new shape.
To give a further boost to the tourism sector, the department had initiated a series of ropeway projects on a public-private partnership (PPP) mode at various tourist and religious centres of the hill state to make them more attractive.
However, most of these projects had hit roadblocks mainly due to the bureaucratic hurdles and lengthy processes of forest clearances and land acquisition.
The cynosure of these projects is the Mussoorie-Dehradun ropeway that would bring down the distance between the two areas to less than 40 minutes. Other ropeway projects are coming up at various famous religious centres like Kedarnath, Yamunotri and Poornagiri in the hill state. After taking forest and environment clearances, the state tourism department in 2008-09 invited bids from private players for the Mussoorie ropeway project where an investment of Rs 700-800 crore was proposed. The government cancelled the two bids it received last year but remained undecided on the future course of action since then.
But after a recent meeting convened by Chief Secretary Subhash Kumar, the department has decided to give the project a new shape and squeeze the size of the investment to only Rs 300-400 crore. “We have decided to make this project more transport-oriented. Earlier, it was more of a resort type project,” said a government official.
The Uttarakhand Infrastructure Projects Company (UIPC), a joint venture between the state government and IL&FS, had prepared the DPR of the project. “We have told the UIPC to make a fresh DPR of the project or make drastic changes in it,” said the official.
The road distance between Mussoorie and Dehradun is 35 kms. The project will be a gondola-type ropeway with carrying capacity of taking 1,100 passengers per hour.