NHAI gets Dec 31 ultimatum for Chaheru bridge repair

Deepkamal Kaur

Advertisement

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, November 26

Temporary relief is in sight for thousands of daily commuters across the Chaheru bridge near Phagwara falling on NH1 which had become a major bottleneck for the road commuters between Delhi and Amritsar for the past over eight months.

From tomorrow onwards, a parallel causeway will start functioning for the commuters from the Delhi side to Amritsar for cars and buses to ease traffic, which remains held up during peak timings for one to two hours on a daily basis.

Peeved at the complaints of the harried commuters and an ultimatum by Union Minister of State Vijay Sampla Vijay Sampla for getting an alternative route constructed at the earliest, Additional Chief Secretary NS Kalsi had today held a meeting of the officials concerned of the NHAI, contractors Soma Enterprises, DCs and SSPs of Jalandhar and Kapurthala with directions issued to the company to complete the work by December 31.

Even as the Chaheru bridge is part of the toll road, the commuters have been facing a lot of harassment here, especially every morning and evening. The administration and the police of the two districts have had to depute staff here during the passing of all dignitaries and even the daily Indo-Pak buses to ensure that these do not get caught in jams. Ever since one side of the bridge developed cracks and was closed for repairs, it is just the narrow other side which is being used for to and fro purpose. It was at this point that the Punjab PMET aspirants coming to Lovely Professional University had got badly stuck during their examination on May 17.

Kalsi said the company staff had agreed to start the causeway from tomorrow morning with the widening of the same being done for the passing of three-axle trucks from December 1. “Since it is a new technology which the NHAI is getting deployed for the repair, it is taking long,” he gave the reason.

Deputy Commissioner Jalandhar KK Yadav elaborated, “It is a carbon grafting technology of IIT Chennai students which is being used for the first time here. Prior to this, the only technology to do away with a 50-year-old bridge was to blast it off. They have already put five panels of carbon. Three more are to be laid, after which only slab work will be left,” he said.

The officials also discussed that since the bridge would remain four-lane even after the repair work, a proposal to make it six-lane should be moved right away. The four-lane bridge in the six-lane project of the NHAI would remain a bottleneck, they said.