People of Guntur, Krishna and NTR districts along with other road-users have to wait for several months for the Vijayawada Bypass to become a reality.
The deadlines for both the stretches of the bypass road between Chinnakakani-Gollapudi connecting Guntur and NTR districts and Gollapudi and Chinna Avutapalli have been extended owing to the delay in the progress of the projects.
The 47.88-km six-lane stretch of the greenfield national highway between Chinnakakani of Guntur district and Chinna Avutapalli of Krishna district via Gollapudi of NTR district connects the Hyderabad-Machilipatnam (NH 65) and Chennai-Kolakata (NH-16) at Gollapudi and also serves as a bypass to both the national highways passing right through Vijayawada.
Works of the Chinna Avutapalli-Gollapudi stretch of 30 km and Chinnakakani-Gollapudi stretch of 17.88 km were awarded to the contractors in February 2021 and July 2021 respectively under Hybrid Annuity Mode.
According to the reports by the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI), though the work on the Chinna Avutapalli and Gollapudi stretch is nearing completion it has been delayed by at least another five months due to issues related to power lines crossing the section at multiple locations in NTR district.
The NHAI is awaiting clearance of the power lines by the respective corporations to complete the project. The project taken up at ₹997.75 crore was supposed to be completed by February 2023 and was extended to August 2023. The deadline has been extended again to January 31, 2024, as nearly 90% of the work is completed.
Meanwhile, the Chinnakakani-Gollapudi stretch will be a reality only in 2025 if works go on as per schedule. Supposed to be completed by January 2024, the deadline for the ₹1,194.57 crore project has been extended to April 14, 2025 by the NHAI. Though it is a smaller stretch, the challenge lies in the construction of a three-km iconic bridge across the Krishna connecting Surayapalem in NTR district and Venkatapalem in Guntur district. It also intersects the seed access road in the capital region and meets NH-16 near Kaza tollgate. The entire stretch is being built with a provision of expanding it into eight lanes in the future.
Meanwhile, plans are afoot to take forward the Vijayawada east bypass stretch between Chinnakakani in Guntur and Pottipadu in Krishna via Gannavaram and Kankipadu in Krishna and Nutakki, Mangalagiri in Guntur districts. The completion of both the bypass roads will form an outer ring road of about 100 km in length around Vijayawada.
