Golden Quadrilateral to be over by June'11

The work for six-laning the 5,846-km-long highway has already started.

The Golden Quadrilateral (GQ), which is part of the first phase of the National Highways Development Project (NHDP), will be completed by June next year, around 11 years after it was started.

“A small stretch in Karnataka will be completed by December this year and around 50 km of stretch in Orissa that is stuck will be finished by June next year. This will complete the Golden Quadrilateral project,” said a senior official of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) who did not want to be identified.

The Orissa project was halted because of law and order issues and delay in regulatory approvals.

GQ, which was started by the National Democratic Alliance government in 2000, is a 5,846-km-long highway network connecting principal metros like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai.

Even though GQ will be complete, Phase I of NHDP does not have any completion date yet. Apart from GQ, the first phase includes 380 km of port connectivity and some sections of North-South and East-West corridors.

“An eighty-five km port connectivity project is stuck because the Chennai port has not paid its share of the fund to be spent on these projects. Until it pays that, the project will not be awarded and will be further delayed,” said the official.

He further explained that the port connectivity project was being done by a special purpose vehicle (SPV), which has NHAI, Chennai and Ennore ports as members.

All the three entities were to share the cost of developing the road connecting the ports. Both NHAI and the Ennore port paid their share but the Chennai port did not. As a result, six port connectivity projects covering 85 km have not yet been awarded.

The second phase of NHDP, which constitutes the remaining sections of the East-West and North-South corridors, is also not on time and will be delayed by up to five years.

“The East-West corridor will be completed by 2013 but the North-South one will be done only in 2015. The North-South corridor constitutes building roads and tunnels in Jammu & Kashmir, which will take time. The major part of the East-West corridor has been done,” said the official.

Out of 6,647 km under the second phase, which was to be completed by December 2010, 4,697 km has been completed, 1,436 km is under implementation and the rest is yet to be awarded.

The third phase of NHDP, which aims at upgrading 12,109 km of highways to four and six lanes, has a deadline of December 2013. In this phase, 5,103 km of projects are in the process of getting awarded, 5,201 km is under implementation and the rest is complete.

The fourth phase of NHDP, which aims at two-laning 20,000 km of national highways, is to be completed by December 2015.

The work on the fifth phase of the highway development project, which aims at six-laning of GQ, has started. Around 302 km road under this phase with a deadline of December 2012 has been six-laned, 4,200 km is yet to be awarded and the rest 1,998 km is under implementation.