Reduce travel time in Bihar to below 5 hours: Nitish to road dept

He also reviewed progress of many under-construction bridges, including the Digha rail-cum-road bridge on Ganga

Stressing on improvement of road connectivity in Bihar, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today directed road construction department to reduce travel time to not more than five hours between here and corner of the state.

The road projects in Bihar should be executed expeditiously and ensure monitoring of the ongoing works to ensure that travel time by road from anywhere in the state to Patna should not take more than five hours, he told a review meeting of the road construction department.

The road projects should be conceived taking into account load of vehicles in future so that the users do not have problems, he told the meeting attended by Road Minister Tejaswi Yadav and high officials.

He said during construction of bridges, the road construction department should simultaneously construct approach roads so that they became viabile for users.

Kumar also reviewed progress of many under-construction bridges, including the Digha rail-cum-road bridge on Ganga and others and stressed on speedy execution of all those road-cum-bridge projects.

Later, presiding over a review meeting of the finance department, he directed the implementation of student credit card for those talented to assist them to pursue higher studies.

The student credit card project should be implemented in mission mode as the scheme will improve gross enrolment ratio (GER) in Bihar, besides enabling the state to attain the target with regard to human resources development, he said.

The Chief Minister asked the finance department to explore means to raise revenue from internal sources and ensure 100 per cent utilisation of funds allocated to different projects, besides monitoring implementation of those schemes with central funds.