The Union Cabinet Wednesday approved the four-laning of the 84.2-km Mokama-Munger section of the Buxar-Bhagalpur high-speed corridor in a key industrial region of poll-bound Bihar.
The Cabinet also approved the doubling of the 177-km Bhagalpur-Dumka-Rampurhat railway line, which passes through Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal, at a cost of `3,169 crore.
The Rs 4,447-crore highway project will be constructed under the hybrid annuity model, a variant of public-private partnership.
Mokama-Munger was the only remaining two-lane section of the 363-km Buxar-Bhagalpur corridor. Four-laning work is on in stretches such as the 51-km Munger-Bhagalpur section and the 10-km Koilwar-Kanhauli section.
The Buxar-Koilwar, Kachhidargah-Bakhtiyarpur and Bakhtiyarpur-Mokama sections are now four-lane corridors. The 39-km Kanhauli-Ramnagar section is a six-lane highway and work has been awarded for the expansion of the 14.5-km Ramnagar-Kachhidargah to six lanes.
An official said the Mokama-Munger section will have closed tolling. This is a toll collection system where plazas are at all entry and exit points, requiring a ticket to pay for distance travelled.
This system will increase average speeds to 80 kmph, thus reducing overall travel time to approximately 1.5 hours, said the official.
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The Munger-Jamalpur-Bhagalpur belt in Eastern Bihar has industrial units — such as an ordnance factory, a locomotive workshop (in Jamalpur) and food processing units (in Munger) — which will drive up the freight movement and traffic on the corridor.
On the rail line doubling, a Railways official said the existing line is saturated and the project will boost passenger and freight movement.
“It will facilitate the additional freight traffic of fertilisers, coal, cement, stones, etc. In total, it will increase freight movement by 15 million tonnes per annum. It will also improve connectivity to some famous destinations like Deoghar (Baba Baidyanath Dham) and Tarapith (Shakti Peeth),” said the official.
The project covers five districts — Bhagalpur and Banka in Bihar, Godda and Dumka in Jharkhand and Birbhum in West Bengal. Banka, Godda and Dumka are “aspirational districts”, meaning they are among India’s most underdeveloped districts.
