NHAI to develop 121-km long Guwahati Ring Road on BOT mode

New Delhi/Guwahati, April 3 (IANS) The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) would develop a 121-km-long Guwahati Ring Road on Build Operate Toll (BOT) mode at a total cost of Rs 5,729 crore, officials said on Thursday.

The NHAI on Thursday signed a concession agreement with the Ahmedabad-based M/s Dineshchandra R Agrawal Infracon Pvt. Ltd in the national capital to accomplish the vital project. NHAI Chairman, Santosh Kumar Yadav and senior officials were present on the occasion.

As per the agreement, the concession period of the contract is 30 years, including a construction period of four years.

Providing impetus to the project, the Assam government would bear 50 per cent of land cost, provide exemption from royalty on aggregates and state portion of GST contributing about Rs 1,270 crore, an official statement said, adding that the gross project cost is about Rs 7,000 crore.

The Guwahati Ring Road project would have three sections, which include a 56 km long 4-lane Access-Controlled Northern Guwahati Bypass, widening of the existing 8 km bypass on National Highway-27 from four lanes to six lanes, and improvement of the existing 58 km long bypass on NH-27.

A three km long major bridge over the river Brahmaputra would also be constructed as a part of the project, the statement said.

The Guwahati Ring Road would provide seamless connectivity to long-distance traffic plying on the East-West Corridor of NH-27, which is the gateway to the northeast region of the country. The development of the ring road would help to decongest Guwahati City and neighboring northeastern states by bypassing major traffic coming from West Bengal and Bihar to Silchar in southern Assam, Nagaland, and Tripura.

The project would also provide seamless connectivity to major towns in the region, including Siliguri (in north Bengal), Silchar, Shillong, Jorhat, Tezpur, Jogigopha, and Barpeta.

The Union government has been encouraging Public-Private Partnership for BOT projects. To encourage the adoption of projects on BOT mode, various modifications in the Modal Concession Agreement (MCA) of BOT (Toll) and provisional BOT (Toll) have been made in the recent past.

The Guwahati Ring Road project is the first contract signed on the basis of a modified modal concession agreement, which would pave the way for more such contracts. As a part of the Centre's 'Vision 2047', a large number of high-speed corridors are envisaged to be developed.

Robust Public-Private Partnerships in the development of the road sector would play a pivotal role in realising this vision and will greatly contribute towards the development, as well as operations and maintenance of the world-class National Highway network in the country.

--IANS

sc/vd