12 January 2019: Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar wants to upgrade a 552.3 km under-construction road along the Indo-Nepal border into a four-lane highway in view of its “strategic significance for the border guarding forces”.
According to a Times of India report, the entire stretch of the road will run between “0 to 5 km” of the international border between Nepal and its southern neighbour, India.
The project is already underway but as a two-lane road. However, following an aerial survey of the construction activities last Thursday, Mr Kumar has apparently asked the state’s road construction authority to seek additional funding from the central government in New Delhi to upgrade the two-lane road into a strategic four-lane highway.
An average of 45-metre land has already been acquired by the state government along the entire stretch of 552.3 kilometres along Nepal, the report said.
The construction of the highway is expected to be finished by March 2022.
“Altogether 141 out-posts of Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) will be linked to this road which is being developed by the Ministry of Home Affairs to provide facilities to ensure better mobility of the border guarding forces,” TOI quoted a government source as saying.
Nitish Kumar apparently decided to upgrade the current two-lane project into a four-lane highway following an aerial inspection of the ongoing road construction work, Times of India reported.
