Road construction at faster pace: Khanduri

Stating that the pace of road construction and designing had picked up many times in the past four or five years, Union minister for road transport and highways B C Khanduri urged the Indian Roads Congress (IRC) to drastically change its role as a facilitator for construction of quality roads, highways and bridges in the country.

Khanduri said this while delivering the inaugural address at the 64th session of the India Road Congress currently underway in Ahmedabad.

The minister said, "I think the IRC needs to reconsider its role. There is no point in producing papers that eventually land up in archives."

"Why should our engineers develop a mindset that no project is successful without running into a time overrun and a cost overrun?" Khanduri asked.

Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi stressed on the need for constructing roads based on a developmental strategy.

He told the delegates that there is a need to look at roads as a tool for generating wealth and while social responsibilities are important, it is time to look at the option of seeing roads as generators of wealth.

Addressing IRC president R R Sheoran, Khanduri said he hoped that the deliberations over the next three days will bring about quality suggestions that give a boost to the massive road widening and construction activity that has been taken up by the central and the state governments.

"Come out with specific suggestions for my ministry at the end of this session," he said. India has a 33 lakh-km road network, second only to the US, the minister said.

"Until four or five years ago, our road network was atrocious. Between 1947 and 1997, only 13,000 kms of new national highways were constructed. In the past five years though, over 23,000 kms have been added to the national highways," he said.

Although the national highways in India are over a length of 58,112 kms, this is just two per cent of the total road network in the country.

Commenting on the golden quadrilateral project of the prime minister, the minister said between Rs 40 crore and Rs 50 crore is being spent per day on the project.

"From constructing 11 kms of roads per year, we are now constructing 11 kms per day," the minister said. Modi said the problem is perhaps with the approach towards construction of roads.

"Earlier, roads were constructed because there was a need or some political bigwig got the road sanctioned. it is now time that we look at construction of roads as part of a development strategy," Modi said.