The acquisition of 91.77% of the total required land for the expansion of national highway 66 in the State has been completed, Minister for Public Works P.A. Mohamed Riyas told the Assembly on Monday.
Out of 1,076.64 hectares of land required, 988.09 hectares have been acquired so far. The State government, which is bearing 25% of the land acquisition cost, has handed over ₹5,311 crores to the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) till now.
Mr. Riyas said the Public Works department’s (PWD) NH wing earlier had 1,782 km of road under its control. This has now been reduced to 548 km, with the rest being handed over to the NHAI. But the total number of officials in the wing remained the same at 815. It has now been decided to shift 356 officials to other sections facing a paucity of officials.
The Minister said the present system of awarding separate electrification tender after the construction of buildings under the PWD will be done away with. A composite tendering system will be implemented by which tender for electrification will be awarded along with the tender for building construction. Currently, buildings remain closed for a longer period even after construction as the electrification is delayed.
The PWD has begun deploying constituency-level monitoring teams under superintending engineers and executive engineers to monitor the various works and condition of roads and buildings in each constituency.
Mr. Riyas said MLAs have given a positive feedback on the teams, which began functioning from January this year. There are drastic differences in the distance of roads and the number of assets in each constituency. The officials in section offices will be redeployed based on this, he added.
