Phase-I of Ram Jhula ready

Phase-I of Ram Jhula ready

                                                                               

FINAL gap in Ram Jhula. the prestigious cable stayed railway over-bridge at Santra Market, was cemented on Wednesday. The project which has lagged behind several years is being executed by M/s Afeons Pvt. Ltd.. a big name in the construction industry. Construction of retaining wall is all that needed to finish of the project's first phase.

The project involves two bridges of three lanes each but now doubts have surfaced over second phase owing to prolonged delay in completion of first phase itself. Initially, the project cost was pegged at Rs 45.90 crores and work started in year 2006 and deadline was three-years. But, one does not know what happened and all estimates went wrong and it took nearly eight years to complete the first phase only and that to involved cost escalation which saw cost zoom to nearly Rs 95 crores.

Maharashtra State Road Development          Corporation

(MSRDC) is the nodal agency for execution of the project. The RoB is meant for providing solution to prolonged chaos at Jaistambh Square for vehicular traffic moving from  East Nagpur- Central NagpurtoWestNagpur. However now even after first phase of Ram Jhula the traffic snarls at the

Jaistambh junction are likely to worsen due to blunder made by MSRDC in construction a fly-over in from of Nagpur railway station. The cable stayed bridge is meant to repalce the RoB constructed by Britishers at Santra Market nearly 100-years ago. It may be mentioned that Vidarblia Tax Payers (VTA) had filed an intervention application in Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in Bombay High Court's Nagpur Bench for timely completion of Ram Jhula project which led to final deadline for first phase of project.

Posted in: News 2014