Patna: The Patna High Court on Thursday dropped many in the state government while verbally observing that it was an executive failure that had caused delaying the construction of several national highways in the state.
A division bench from Chief Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice S Kumar heard a batch of at least 28 Pils regarding the NH construction project in the state.
At least 35 Pils had taken Suo Motu by the High Court after starting to monitor the project in March this year.
During hearing, a bench that verbally observed that it did not have an interest in monitoring the project, but did it when the executives had failed to carry out their duties which had caused delays of up to 10 years of completion of several projects.
The court also verbally observed that project costs, borne by NHAI, increased exponentially due to delays.
“The state government has failed in obtaining land needed for construction work and handed it to NHAI in a time-bound manner after releasing all types of encroachment,” he said.
The court observed that the state government must think of building permanent monitoring cells that will be responsible for monitoring NH construction projects, so it saves valuable valuable time.
The High Court directed the authorities concerned to ensure that encroachment was removed from Chowk Ramashish Hajipur and a police building was cleaned within 24 hours so that the ground could be submitted to the NHA for the construction of NH to connect the place with Muzaffarpur.
On Wednesday, the court had directed the contractor involved in the construction of the Chhapra-Hajipur NH stretch to solve it in the next 45 days.
Senior Adviser SD Sanjay appeared for NHAI while additional advocates General Anjani Kumar represented the state government in court.
The problem will now be taken by the High Court on August 19.
HC RAPS Over Delay in the National Highway Project
