Road work lags in Naxal areas

Deteriorating law and order coupled with lack of coordination between road building agencies and security forces is threatening to derail the government’s ongoing road connectivity programme in the eight Naxal-affected states.

Deteriorating law and order coupled with lack of coordination between road building agencies and security forces is threatening to derail the government’s ongoing road connectivity programme in the eight Naxal-affected states.

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“If there is inadequate security cover, we won’t be able to complete this year’s target of building 1,000 km,” said an official.

The plan to build roads in the Red Corridor was approved way back in 2009. Of the 5,477 km stretch of two-lane roads to be built in Phase I of the programme, so far, the road ministry has not even managed to construct 2,000 km.

The road ministry, which is implementing the programme, will stress the need for better coordination between different stakeholders at the chief minister’s meeting on Wednesday.

In view of the increased risk, the road ministry has chalked out a revised strategy which mandates that from now on all road construction plan in high risk zones will have to be finalised in tandem with the deployment plan of security forces in these areas.

The decision to work in close coordination with security forces was necessitated as a sizeable number of road projects fall in these zones. “Not much has happened despite our taking up the matter with the home ministry.”