Bhubaneswar: The expansion of 265-km Cuttack-Sambalpur National Highway-55 into four lanes will be completed by March 31, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari told Rajya Sabha in a written reply.In response to a query from BJD MP Mamata Mohanta, Gadkari said that work on 223 km, which include more than 128 km of 153-km stretch between Angul and Sambalpur and 95 km of 112 km-stretch between Angul and Cuttack, has already been completed.
This came months after Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik raised concern over slow progress of the work, leading to frequent road accidents when Gadkari had told Lok Sabha that it is likely to completed by December. In his letter in March, Naveen also mentioned about 199 casualties in 399 accidents in two years.
The Rs 4,482-crore Sambalpur-Cuttack NH expansion work, which is being executed in three phases – Cuttack-Angul (phase-I), Cuttack-Angul (phase-II) and Angul-Sambalpur (phase-III), started in 2017 and the original completion deadline for the entire stretch was September 2020. Following delay amid COVID outbreak, it was then expected to be completed by June 2022 but again missed the deadline. In March this year, Gadkari shifted the deadline to December and now, again to March next year.
