New Delhi: This decision of the Central Government should be a lesson for the officers and contractor firms who are negligent in the matter of repairing roads. Taking cognizance of the pictures and videos of the poor condition of Amritsar-Jamnagar Economic Corridor and Delhi-Vadodara Expressway, the National Highway Authority of India has taken strict action and dismissed four responsible engineers.

Also, a fine of Rs 50 lakh each has been imposed on the contractors related to both the cases. Probably such action has been taken in very few cases. In the past few days, people have been uploading pictures of the poor condition of many roads and highways on the internet media.

Nitin Gadkari had reprimanded

The responsible officers, who often remained careless about the complaints, were in the mood of turning a blind eye, but recently the Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari held a meeting with the top officials of the Ministry and NHAI and gave clear instructions that if any information is received about the bad condition of the National Highways-Expressways through internet media or any other medium, it should be immediately taken cognizance of and repaired.

After that, recently, through tweets, pictures of potholes at kilometer-39 of Amritsar-Jamnagar Economic Corridor Sangaria-Rasisar section went viral. Taking cognizance of this, NHAI imposed a fine of Rs 50 lakh on the contractor and terminated the services of the resident engineer and site engineer of the concerned authority considering them negligent. Show cause notice has been issued to the project director and deputy manager technical.

The video was shared on social media

NHAI has claimed that despite the disruption caused by rain, temporary repair work has been done at the said place. After the rainy season is over, the affected part of the expressway will be permanently repaired under the guidance of IIT Kharagpur expert Prof. KS Reddy.

Similarly, a video of the poor condition of the road was broadcast on channel 280.980 of package-9 of Delhi-Vadodara Expressway on the internet media. Taking cognizance of this, the resident engineer and site engineer were dismissed. A show cause notice has been issued to the project director and technical manager while imposing a fine of Rs 50 lakh on the contractor.

Responsibility assigned to experts

Along with this, while carrying out temporary repairs of the affected part, experts from IIT Kharagpur, Prof. KS Reddy and Prof. GV Rao from IIT Gandhinagar have been assigned the task of finding out the cause of the damage to the expressway, while Shriram Institute, New Delhi has been assigned the task of collecting samples and examining them.