The secretary of the Union ministry for road transport and highways, A.K. Upadhyay, has urged chief secretary Debendranath Sarangi to revoke the water resource department’s (WRD) direction to the National Highways Authority of India to stop work on the Rs 1,815 crore Chennai Port-Maduravoyal elevated link road project that runs along the Cooum river.
In a letter to Sarangi dated April 3, Upadhyay urged that a meeting of stakeholders be convened to sort out the issue amicably, according to NHAI sources.
The Union secretary had written in August 2011 and March this year to the chief secretary convening a meeting to ensure that there were no hiccups in the implementation of the project, sources said.
Upadhyay had also pointed out that the highways department began work only after getting clearance from all the departments concerned and that it had not deviated from the alignment sanctioned by the WRD along Cooum river.
He also clarified that stoppage of the work at this juncture would result in a compensation claim being made by the contractor.
The WRD had in a letter dated March 29 asked NHAI to stop work because of obstruction to the flow of water in the Cooum. “The NHAI has deviated from the approved alignment at Spurtank Road where the piles are being constructed on the waterway rather than on river bank,” a senior WRD official said.
However, a NHAI official denied that there was any deviation. “The piles are being laid only on the river banks,” the official said. The NHAI had so far completed 20 per cent of the total work and spent more than Rs 700 crore for the project.
After Prime Minister Manmohan Singh laid the foundation stone for the project in January 2009, work on the Koyambedu-Maduravoyal section of the elevated expressway began in September 2010. The work on the Chennai Port to Koyambedu section, which runs along the river Cooum, started in March 2011 after receiving the CRZ clearance.