The Odisha government plans to construct 75,000 kilometers of world-class roads within 5 years.
To enhance the commuting experience and ensure safety, the state government has set an ambitious target of constructing 75,000 kilometers of world-class roads.
Arpit Pattnaik
In order to execute the plan smoothly, various line departments such as works, rural development, housing and urban development, and water resources have been given specific targets. The rural development department has been assigned the task of constructing 30,000 km of roads, the panchayati raj and drinking water department has been tasked with constructing 22,800 km of roads, and the works department has been allocated 15,000 km of roads. Additionally, the water resources department is responsible for constructing 5,000 km of roads, the housing and urban development department will construct 1,200 km, and the National Highways Authority of India will handle 1,000 km. A high-level meeting recently took place to devise a detailed plan, during which the departments were instructed to come up with their own specific road map for construction and completion of the roads within the set deadline. To oversee these efforts, a project monitoring unit will be established in the works department to aid in review and preparation of analytics to inform policies and programs. In order to monitor the effective implementation of the initiative, a steering committee headed by the chief secretary, along with the development commissioner and the secretaries of the respective departments, will be formed. It was also decided to create a State Road Policy which will outline the construction parameters for roads by different agencies, transfer of particular roads from one agency to another, and norms for maintenance of the roads. The draft policy will be prepared by a sub-committee constituted under the chairmanship of the engineer-in-chief of the works department, with the chief engineers of roads and water resources department and representatives of NHAI as its members. The meeting also decided to standardize bridges in terms of span arrangement or superstructure to minimize the period of finalizing the structural designs. The BJP manifesto had promised the construction of world-class roads in rural and urban areas once the party forms the government in the state.
