JOIN USPWD Minister H C Mahadevappa on Monday said that a 40-day deadline has been set for the contractor to resume the work on Chikkanayakanahalli-Hassan State Highway Improvement Project.
Replying to JD(S)' C B Suresh Babu in the Assembly, he said that the contractor, Abhijit Infrastructure Ltd, had found the project financially not viable. Hence the company stopped the work in 2012. “Terminating the contract is easy. But that is not our goal. We want to ensure that the project is completed. Recently, the PWD held a meeting with the company and directed it to resume the work in 40 days,” he added.
Abhijit Infrastructure is mired in the multicrore coal scam. The company commenced work on the project on January 5, 2012. It abruptly stopped the work in July of the same year when the company was accused of involvement in the coal scam. The CBI, which is investigating the scam, is learnt to have subsequently frozen the accounts of the company.
However, Mahadevappa said that the company found the project financially not viable due to decline in iron ore mining activities.
Chikkanayakanahalli-Hassan road was one of busiest State Highway routes before the Supreme Court imposed a ban on iron ore mining in the State in 2010.
The PWD has designed the project on Public Private Partnership (PPP) model with the Karnataka Road Development Corporation Limited's (KRDCL) share of 39 per cent as viability gap funding. The total project cost was estimated at Rs 247 crore. Abhijit Infrastructure was to recover its share of investment by collecting toll from commuters for a period of 28 years. The company has completed only 10 per cent of the work on the project.