Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, June 4: Paying scant regard to the advice of none else than the Chief Minister, a high-level panel constituted to monitor the projects being executed by the Border Roads Organization and the National Highway Authority of India has failed to meet even once since its formation two months ago.
In this way, it has become amply clear that no efforts are made by the top brass of the State to ensure that such committees strictly adhere to the directives issued at the time of their establishment.
Official sources told EXCELSIOR that while chairing meeting of top bureaucrats of the State in the first week of March this year, Chief Minister, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed had laid stress on effective monitoring of projects in all the sectors in order to ensure removal of impediments and their completion within the stipulated time-frame.
Thereafter, Chief Minister announced on the floor of the Legislative Assembly on March 29 that special teams or committees would be constituted for monitoring and inspection of projects so that benefits of such projects percolate to the people within the period as specified in the Detailed Project Reports.
In this background, the General Administration Department vide Government Order No.533 dated April 10, 2015 constituted a high-level projects monitoring committee to monitor the projects being executed by the Border Roads Organization (BRO) and National Highway Authority of India (NHAI).
The committee headed by Minister for R&B, Floriculture and Gardens was asked to address the issues related to co-ordination between the line departments and other concerned agencies for shifting of utilities, settlement of acquisition cases of land/structures and forest clearances. Moreover, the committee was asked to review the progress of four lanning of National Highway and other projects being executed by the BRO and NHAI in the State.
The major task assigned to the committee was to initiate necessary steps or issue guidelines for addressing issues and challenges coming in the way of execution of these projects. The committee comprising Minister of State for R&B and Revenue as its Vice-Chairman and Administrative Secretaries of Forest, Power Development, R&B, Revenue and PHE Departments, Deputy Commissioner concerned, Development Commissioner (Works), Project Director NHAI and representative of BRO as its members and Secretary Technical R&B as Member-Secretary was supposed to meet in the first week of every month.
However, despite lapse of two months the committee has failed to meet even once thereby paying scant regard to the advice of none else than the Chief Minister, sources regretted.
Though Chief Minister himself convened meetings with the Director General of BRO and NHAI authorities and passed instructions for expediting work on the ongoing projects, the panel headed by R&B Minister failed to meet despite the fact that making Administrative Secretaries of five key departments as members of the panel was aimed at ensuring prompt removal of the impediments in the execution of projects by BRO and NHAI, sources said.
“The non-serious approach towards monitoring the projects is notwithstanding the fact that several ongoing projects are facing one or the other hurdles mainly because of lack of coordination between the line departments, the ensuring of which was the primary task of the high-level committee”, sources regretted.
In response to a question, sources said that delays in execution of road projects by the Border Roads Organization in the areas bordering Pakistan and China are mainly due to delay in forest/wildlife clearance, delay in land acquisition etc. The objective behind the constitution of high-level committee was to ensure removal of such impediments from one platform, sources added.
“Similarly, four lanning of National Highway is also facing hurdles due to various impediments at numerous places and unless the same are removed no substantial progress can be made in the implementation of the project”, sources further said.
When contacted, Secretary Technical, R&B, Vimal Tikoo, who is Member Secretary of the committee, said, “meeting would be convened shortly as file has been put up with the Minister for fixing the date”.
However, sources said, “if such is the fate of advice of Chief Minister what would be the outcome of general instructions being given after regular interval remains a million dollar question”.
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