Jahangeer Ganaie

Work on Bijbehara-Shopian road goes on at snail’s pace

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Shopian: Years elapsed since the work over the 25-kilometer-long Bijbehara-Shopian road was started. The authorities have utterly failed to complete the work on two lane highway while as the locals allege that the work is going on at snail’s pace, thereby leaving commuters to face harships.
In Feb 2016, central government approved the widening of Bijbehara-Shopian road and sanctioned an amount of Rs 48.93 crore for the upgradation and widening of the road, which connects Shopian with the highway at Bijbehara.
Later, district officials announced that the road will be developed as 25-feet-two lane highway instead of 12 ft intermediate road.
However, years have passed and work on the road is still incomplete.
The road at present is giving tough time to the commuters and pedestrians as it has turned bumpy and is dotted with potholes from Zainapora to Shopian, locals said.
Locals alleged that the contractor who was assigned the work is working for two to three days hardly in a week due to which the completion of the road is taking time.
They said that “due to the widening of road, the water supply and power supply has also got affected. It seems that it will take many years to complete this project.”
From last three to four months, work is going on at Reshiepora-Chitragam belt and authorities have failed to complete this one kilometer stretch in these months, said a local Showkat Ahmed.
The locals later urged the concerned authorities to look into the matter and complete the road at an earliest so that locals could heave a sigh of relief.
Executive Engineer Road and Buildings Shopian, Zahoor Ahmed, admitted that the completion of the road has taken a lot of time but alleged the delay has occurred due to the negligence of Public Health Engineering (PHE) department as they aren’t shifting the pipelines.
Executive Engineer PHE division Shopian, Nisar Ahmed termed the allegations of R&B department as ‘baseless’, saying that PHE has already shifted the pipelines on temporary basis.


Jahangeer Ganaie

Jahangeer Ganaie is a reporter and covers regional news and can be contacted [email protected]

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