Soon,bypass to decongest killer stretch on NH-21

A resident urban estate will come up on both sides of the new bypass.

An in-principle decision to this effect was taken at the executive committee (EC) meeting of Greater Mohali Area Development Authority (GMADA),chaired by Punjab Chief Secretary S C Agrawal in Chandigarh on Thursday. The approved bypass will take off from the highway near Dara Studio in Sector 56 and connect the meeting point of National Highway-21 and National Highway-95 in Kharar. The new alternate road link will crisscross through Barmajra,Raipur,Mianpur,Jhungian and Jandpur villages according to the alignment already planned in the approved master plan of Mohali.

Confirming the decision,GMADA,Chief Administrator (CA) Vivek Partap Singh told Newsline that while giving a formal go ahead to the proposed project,the EC meeting decided to acquire more land on both sides of the road to develop it as a residential urban estate.

“We will begin acquiring land immediately and will try to complete it within the minimum possible time,” said Singh,while hoping that the bypass will be ready within a year. Though the estimate cost of the projects were yet to be calculated,they will run into several hundreds crores,including the land acquisition cost.

To acquire land for both the projects,tehsildars of Mohali and Kharar have been asked to depute revenue staffers to demarcate the area following which land will be acquired. Besides decongesting the “killer stretch”,the new bypass will provide an alternate route to commuters coming from Ropar and Ludhiana to Mohali and Chandigarh and vice-versa. Instead of taking the heavily congested Mohali-Kharar NH-21,the commuters will take the bypass road to skip Kharar and directly reach Mohali and vice-versa.

Widening of road near completion

The widening of the 4.14 km long NH-21 from Desumajra to Kharar is almost complete. The final layer of the premix is being laid on the 9.5 metres wide highway,which has now been widened by 7.5 metres each on both sides and 1.2 metre-wide divider. The work was awarded at Rs 12.49 crore last August.

Plan for bypass shelved

Plan for a bypass,from Desumajra to Khanpur village in Kharar,mooted by the Congress government was shelved after ex-MLA Kharar Bir Devinder Singh objected to the land acquisition.