Thaindian News

Chandigarh, Nov 16 (IANS) With the concessionaire assigned the crucial Kundli-Manesar-Palwal (KMP) expressway failing to complete the work on time, the Haryana government Wednesday announced that it would invoke penal action against the defaulting company.

“In view of continued slow progress of KMP expressway project and repeatedly missing the deadline proposed by the concessionaire M/s KMP Expressways Ltd - a consortium of DSC Ltd and Apollo Enterprises, the High Powered Committee (express highways) has recommended invoking penal action against the concessionaire,” a government spokesman said here Wednesday after a meeting.

The high-level meeting was chaired by Haryana chief secretary Urvashi Gulati.

“The action would be initiated in accordance with the provisions stipulated under clause 15.4 of the Concession Agreement for which a detailed showcause notice would be issued,” the spokesman said.

The meeting was told the concessionaire had been shifting completion targets time and again despite the fact that the said targets in the earlier various review meetings were proposed by the concessionaire itself.

“In the last review meeting, the concessionaire was asked to give a firm commitment to complete the project, failing which, the state government had clearly stated it would not hesitate to invoke action,” he added.

He said the concessionaire had achieved physical progress of 63.90 percent till October 2011 at a cost of over Rs.946 crore with monthly physical progress of about 0.16 percent at a cost of Rs.2.36 crore only against the original and revised targets of 100 percent.

“The concessionaire had not been able to achieve his proposed re-revised targets for the last two years and there had been lag of about 36 percent in the physical progress up to October 2011 from the proposed target in the latest proposed work completion schedule,” he pointed out.

The Haryana government has been issuing warnings to the concessionaire regarding the tardy pace of work. The last warning was issued in April.

Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda has himself inspected the KMP expressway site. He has even given a dressing down to the officials of the Concessionare but the project continued to move at a snail’s pace.

The 135-km KMP expressway will ease the inflow of traffic, especially heavy vehicles like trucks, passing through 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-Indo-Pak 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.19 billion KMP expressway missed another deadline by the end of 2010 and a second one in March this year despite the construction company and the state government saying that work on the expressway is going on “war footing”.