Three bypasses to decongest Solan NH remain incomplete

Ambika Sharma

Tribune News Service

Solan, February 4

The work to complete the repair of three bypass roads, the 29.4-km Parwanoo-Jangeshu-Kasauli-Dharampur road, 13-km Kamli-Bhojnagar road and 14-km Chakki-Bhojnagar road, supposed to decongest Parwanoo-Solan NH-5 while it is being four-laned, has been caught in official rigmarole.

Even though the contractor has failed to complete the work in time, the officials of the PWD are dithering over cancelling the contract.

JP Structures was assigned the task worth Rs 18 crore to repair three roads in January 2017. The work was supposed to be completed within a year.

The NHAI had granted funds to the PWD. While about 90 per cent of the work on the Kamli-Bhojnagar and Chakki-Bhojnagar roads has been completed, about 8-km stretch on the Parwanoo-Jangeshu-Kasauli-Dharampur road was yet to be repaired. The condition of this road had worsened in the rains. The inordinate delay has defeated the purpose as NH-22 continues to bear the high volume of traffic while its repair was under way.

A recommendation to cancel the contract had been made by the Executive Engineer, Kasauli, in June last year but the contractor was given one more opportunity to complete the work. Despite a written undertaking, the contractor has failed to undertake any work till November and another recommendation was made to cancel his contract.

What was, however, lamentable that PWD officials had to press their own staff into service to undertake some repair work after the contractor had failed to begin repair till October last year.

Senior officials instead of cancelling his contract had raised queries and this will further delay even the re-tendering process which takes three month.

Since no work is executed from November to March, the process to re-tender could have been undertaken during this period so that work could resume as soon as the inclement weather turned good.

Executive Engineer, PWD, Kasauli, Ravi Bhatti said they were yet to receive directions to cancel the contract. Some queries had been raised by senior officials in response to a recommendation made to cancel his contract.

Though the contractor is supposed to ensure the repair of the road for two years after the completion of the work and also maintain it for three years, all work came to a standstill in April. Even the work executed was shoddy.