Cash crunch over, May deadline for Kundli-Manesar-Palwal expressway

Cash crunch over, May deadline for Kundli-Manesar-Palwal expressway

 Jun 9, 2012,

NEW DELHI: The Haryana and Delhi governments have set next May as the new deadline for completing the 135km Kundli-Manesar-Palwal Expressway. The road, which is 50% of the ring expressway coming up around Delhi, was planned to take the heavy vehicles load off Delhi roads.

After a two-hour meeting with the private developer KMP Expressway Ltd on Friday, Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit and her Haryana counterpart Bhupinder Singh Hooda claimed that all issues had been resolved. They said the developer had faced financial crunch, slowing down the project, but the problem had been solved.

The Haryana government, which awarded the project in 2006, earlier fixed December 2010 as the deadline but only 60% of the work has been completed.

The developer has now been asked to open the "priority stretch" of the expressway between Palwal and Manesar by mid-September or mid-October. A senior official who attended the meeting said Haryana had warned the developer that the contract would be terminated if it failed to meet the May 2013 deadline.

The meeting, which was held at the Delhi secretariat, was also attended by the Supreme Court-appointed Environmental Protection and Conservation Authority chairman, Bhure Lal, who is monitoring the ring expressway projects.

The developer's financial crunch was the main reason behind the delay, both CMs said, adding that the private player claimed that it now has enough finances to expedite the work.

The Delhi and Haryana governments, however, failed to sort out the issue of sharing the land acquisition cost for the project, sources said.

Due to the delays in the land acquisition, the liability on the Delhi government has increased to Rs 1,110 crore against the original estimate of Rs 167 crore. "The Delhi government can't be made to pay for this high escalation just on the ground that this expressway will reduce environmental pollution. There will be another round of meeting at the chief-secretary level where Haryana will submit how much land it acquired only for the road. How can huge public exchequer be doled out to Haryana when this project will bring huge economic prosperity only to Haryana?" asked a source in the Delhi government.

He added that though SC had fixed the criteria of sharing the acquisition cost, Delhi could not be made to take the burden of Haryana's inefficiencies.

The expressway will connect NH-1 at Kundli and NH-2 at Faridabad via NH-10 and NH-8.