NHAI to develop Guwahati Ring Road project at Rs 5729cr

Guwahati: National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) will develop a 121-kilometre-long stretch through Guwahati city's eastern side as Guwahati Ring Road on build-operate-toll mode at a total expenditure of Rs 5,729 crore with zero grant.

Ministry of road transport and highways, in a statement on Thursday, announced that NHAI has executed a concession agreement with the contractor M/s Dineshchandra R Agrawal Infracon Pvt. Ltd in the presence of NHAI chairman Santosh Kumar Yadav and senior officials of NHAI.

The concession duration of the contract spans 30 years, encompassing a construction period of four years. "Providing impetus to the project, state govt of Assam will bear 50% of land cost, provide exemption from royalty on aggregates and state portion of GST, contributing about Rs 1,270 crore. Thus, the gross project cost is about Rs 7,000 crore," the release said.

The project comprises three sections, including a 56-km-long 4-lane access-controlled Northern Guwahati Bypass, widening of the existing 8 km bypass on NH 27 from four lanes to six lanes, and improvement of existing 58-km-long bypass on NH 27. A 3 km long major bridge across river Brahmaputra will also be constructed within the project's scope.

The Guwahati Ring Road has been conceptualised to facilitate seamless connectivity for long-distance traffic traversing the East-West Corridor of NH-27, the gateway to northeast region. The ring road development will help decongest Guwahati city and neighbouring northeastern states by bypassing major traffic flowing from West Bengal and Bihar to Silchar, Nagaland and Tripura, officials said.

"The project shall also ensure seamless connectivity to major towns in the region, including Siliguri, Silchar, Shillong, Jorhat, Tezpur, Jogigopha, and Barpeta," the govt release added.

Centre has been fostering public-private partnership for build-operate-transfer (BOT) projects. To encourage adoption of projects on BOT mode, various modifications in the Modal Concession Agreement (MCA) of BOT(Toll) and provisional BOT(Toll) have been implemented recently. This agreement marks the first contract executed under the modified MCA, establishing precedent for future contracts.

As part of Govt of India's ‘Vision 2047', numerous high-speed corridors are envisaged for development.

Robust public-private partnership in road sector development will play a crucial role in actualising this vision and substantially contribute towards development, operations and maintenance of world-class national highway network across the country, the release said.