The National Highway Authority of India is likely to abandon the four-laning of the 80-km Muzaffarnagar-Hardwar section of the Delhi-Dehradun corridor.

This comes after the state government refused to sign a State Support Agreement for a 21-km stretch which falls within the state.

State PWD Principal Secretary Kapil Dev said the Highway Authority could take up the project at its "own risk" because the state government had never made any commitment nor signed any MoU to support the project.

According to sources, the Highway Authority had been discussing the project with the state government for more than a year, but they had never indicated that it they would not support the project.

In August 2008, the Authority had even sent a draft of the State Support Agreement to the state government. Thereafter, the state government had sought for information like the name of the construction agency, the legal status of the agency and had also asked the Highway Authority to deposit Rs 6,000 as fees to inspect the legality of the proposed State Support Agreement.

Following the discussion, the Highway Authority had completed a substantial amount of the work on the project which involves the four-laning of the Muzaffarnagar-Hardwar section on Built, Operate and Transfer (BOT) basis under the National Highways Development Project (Phase-III).

The detailed project report has been prepared and the Highway Authority has even obtained the Supreme Court's permission to construct the 8-km stretch passing through the Rajaji National Park.

According to the Highway Authority, the work on land acquisition for the 21-km stretch in the state and other another 50-km stretch in Uttarakhand had been initiated and tenders had been invited in August.

... contd.