No takers for Uttar Pradesh highway projects

Lucknow, June 25 (IANS) Projects to widen seven state highways in Uttar Pradesh to four lanes have failed to take off. Even after tenders were floated five times, no company or private contractor came up to take the job, an official said Wednesday.

"These roads are in bad shape and the state government wanted to repair and four-lane them before the onset of monsoons, but this is apparently not going to happen now," said the official.

These state highways are Balrampur-Gonda-Jarwal, Shahjahanpur-Hardoi-Lucknow, Muzaffarnagar-Saharanpur, Etah-Shikohabad, Akbarpur-Jaunpur-Mirzapur-Dudhi, Tarighat-Bara road and Aligarh-Mathura highways.

The state government had taken the decision study which showed traffic was high on these roads and congestion rampant.

The projects were on the public-private-partnership (PPP) model. But officials said that after initial interest contractors backtracked due to bottlenecks in land acquisition procedures and in getting no objection certificates (NoCs).

The chief minister's office will now give directives on the situation, the official said.