Port Blair, Mar 01: The Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi during his public meeting on 30th December 2018 at Netaji Stadium has directed the Lt. Governor, A & N Islands to apprise him of all the Rural Roads that are in need of repair and upgradation, on that Chief Secretary has entrusted the responsibility of physical verification and status of these roads from Diglipur to Campbell Bay to Mr. Krishan Kumar, Secretary under the A & N Administration, this gigantic exercise of assessing the status of rural roads by visiting all roads has been completed by the officers of different department. Status report consisting more than 4200 pages has been prepared in time.
The request of UT Administration for financial assistance for special roads for improvement/upgradation of Rural Roads measuring 246 kms has been discussed in a meeting chaired by Additional Secretary (UT), Ministry of Home Affairs and attended by representative of Ministry of Rural Development, Secretary (RD) Mr. Krishan Kumar, A & N Administration, representative of Niti Aayog and SE (PRI) A & N Islands, Mr. U K Singh on 12th February, 2019.
The proposal for 599 KM of Rural Roads in the three Districts has been sent after these roads have been physically verified in multi departmental exercise comprising of PWD, Zilla Parishad, PRI, Forest, Revenue, Rural Development and Rural Development Blocks and the exercise was undertaken from 4th January 2019 to 12th January 2019. It was recorded that total 599 KM of rural roads need urgent repair. The proposal was submitted on 14th January 2019 to Ministry of Rural Development, the Ministry after deeply analyzing the proposal informed that 6 kms rural roads of Andaman and Nicobar Islands will be covered in PMGSY-I and 250 KMs Rural Roads in PMGSY-II is being considered by Ministry of Rural Development and informed the MHA that the balance rural roads of 343 Km in A & N are not covered under PMGSY I & II, therefore in the meeting with Additional Secretary (UT), Secretary(RD) A & N Administration was directed to submit the detail proposal for 343 KM roads with standard specification of durable quality upgradation. Accordingly the proposal was submitted on 20th February 2019 to Ministry of Home Affairs and subsequently was referred to NITI Aayog for consideration and recommendation of required funds under the Grant No. 40.
As per the recent communication by the Secretary(RD/Agri) on 27th February 2019 and relevant information have been submitted to NITI Ayog and it is learned that the proposal has been cleared by NITI Aayog and further concurred and approved by Ministry of Finance , Govt. of India.
On receipt of fund, the work will be executed by Dept. of RD and APWD (for respective road length) and by means of standard bidding documents containing suitable provisions for ensuring quality control and third party inspection, technical audit team, quality monitoring team, special mechanism for dispute redressal and online monitoring.