Golden Quadrilateral slips into the slow lane

Against the backdrop of this serious setback to the project, Parliament’s newly constituted Standing Committee of the Road Transport Ministry met several times last week to discuss delays and cost over-runs—the project’s initial estimate in 1999 (including the North-South and East-West corridors) was Rs 54,000 cr and is now revised to Rs 65,000 cr.

Committee chairman CPM’s Nilotpal Basu declined to give specifics but he told The Indian Express: ‘‘It appears some serious miscalculations were made and not enough homework done. The progress has been reviewed by the committee and an upward revision of outlays is being done.’’

His committee’s report with the revised figures is scheduled to be placed in Parliament next week. Says former Transport Minister B C Khanduri: ‘‘The GQ does not belong to any one Government and it is debatable whether the deadlines were over-realistic. I did try to push the project and I don’t mind accepting the blame.’’

On paper, the NHAI says there’s no go-slow despite these reversals. And that of the total 5,846 km of GQ roads, 3,038 km have been completed which is only a 52% completion rate; 76 contracts for 2,808 km are still under execution. In April, when elections began, says the NHAI, the GQ had completed 2,665 km, with 373 km being added till July 31.

What these statistics don’t reveal is that some of the GQ projects haven’t even shown 10% progress. Take the two GQ sretches where contracts were recently terminated.

• The 59-km Shikohabad-Etawah stretch shows only a 8% completion on the ground. The Rs 157-crore contract was awarded to China Coal Construction Company and was called off last month.

• The 51-km Ganjam-Icchapuram project, awarded to the Indo-Malasiyan Joint Venture company, Bumihighway: Scheduled to be ready five months ago, reports show just a 12.35% completion on ground. The contract was terminated in January.

• Both these GQ stretches will have to be re-tendered by NHAI, a process which means more delay since the contractors have challenged the termination in court. And in both cases, High Courts have stayed the re-tendering process.

• NHAI officials admit that while these two contracts presented the worst-case scenario, they are equally worried about the fate of the stretches involving 15 companies which were sent notices last month after being declared ‘‘non-performing.’’

• What this means is that while their projects are still on the road, the contractors can’t bid for any other NHAI tender till they come off the blacklist.

There are four Malaysian firms on the ‘‘non-performing’’ list, along with construction giants like the Russian Centrodorstroy company. Among the Indian blacklisted firms on the list are Essar, Afcons Infrastructure and Bhageeratha Engineering. Says NHAI’s Member (Technical) Nirmaljit Singh: ‘‘If we punished these contractors with termination, too, these projects too would have stalled. We did not want that to happen though I admit performance levels here too have been very, very slow.’’

Other NHAI officials, who were on the Committee which finalised the list of ‘‘non-performing’’ contractors, said the NHAI had even been prepared for a 75% over-run on deadlines but these contractors could not even meet that criterion—some of them showing as little as 10-20% progress on the ground.

NHAI officials and the Chairman of the Standing Committee trot out routine reasons for the delay: from problems of land acqusition to shifting of public utilities to getting clearances from the Ministries of Railway and Environment.