The minister, RT&H, has ignored this. According to his own ministry’s norms, it takes 25 months to start work after approval has been given.

In fact, some of the norms laid down by the ministry of RT&H are as follows:

• Identification of specific projects & engagement of consultant for project preparation: 9 months

• Feasibility study, detailed Project preparation: 12 months

• Land acquisition: 12 months

• Pre-qualification of contractors, bids, award of works: 7 months

• Engagement of supervision consultant: 5 months

The total is 45 months. By “dovetailing” various activities, the time-lag accepted is 25 months.

The UPA government has very conveniently ignored the time and effort required for the preparatory work.

When the UPA government took over on 22 May, 2004, a number of projects were in the final stages of completion. In case of three projects, as much as 98.5 per cent and for twelve others, over 90 per cent was complete. Are these to be credited to the UPA account?

In view of the above, the figures produced by minister for RT&H and the “claims” make interesting reading.

Points to be noted: As per the monthly break-up provided by the minister of RT&H, in the very first month after its takeover—June 2004— the UPA claims to have completed work on 186 kms. the Going by its its own mathematics, the government could have claimed a completion rate of 6.2 kms per day (186 divided by 30).

In November 2004 alone, the UPA government claims to have completed 909 kms. Thus in 2004, the overall length of highways completed was 2097.4 kms, the break-up being:

... contd.