Nine months to complete KMP Manesar-Palwal stretch

GURGAON: Having suffered a delay of nearly five years, the 136-km Kundli-Manesar-Palwal Expressway project may finally be completed with the Haryana government approving resumption of work on the stalled project.
"While the Manesar-Palwal section would be completed in nine months, the Manesar-Kundli section would be completed in two years," a spokesman of the Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructural Development Corporation (HSIIDC) said.
The Supreme Court had on Jan 30 directed the state government to award the contract for the project to a new concessionaire within two months. The new concessionaire will have to commence work within a month's time. The construction work on the six-lane expressway, slated to pass through five districts in Haryana - Sonipat, Jhajjar, Gurgaon, Mewat and Palwal - was stalled following issues with the concessionaire which was constructing it.
The project, launched with much fanfare by the previous Congress government led by Bhupinder Singh Hooda, has been delayed much beyond its completion deadline of December 2009.
The concessionaire alleged that the government had failed to acquire land for the project in time leading to cost escalation. Less than 65% of the project had been completed till October 2011.
The Haryana government, after repeated warnings, invoked the penalty clause against the concessionaire which approached the Supreme Court.
The spokesman said completion of the project would not only provide high-speed link to northern Haryana with its southern districts like Gurgaon, Faridabad and Palwal, but also de-congest Delhi.
The significance of the expressway is not only that it will connect four major national highways, NH-1 (Delhi-Ambala-Amritsar), NH-2 (Delhi-Agra-Varanasi-Dankuni), NH-8 (Delhi-Jaipur-Ahmedabad-Mumbai) and NH-10 (Delhi-Hisar-Fazilka-Pakistan border), but will significantly reduce the traffic from north Indian states to central, western and south India and vice versa.
Originally slated to be completed in November 2009, the nearly Rs 1900 crore expressway missed several deadlines. Agencies