Rajesh Moudgil
Chandigarh
The work for the four-laning of the Pinjore-Nalagarh national highway is all set to start with the Himachal Pradesh government planning to award the contract of its construction in the next week or two.
The existing Pinjore-Nalagarh national highway (national highway – NH 105, which was earlier called 21-A, has been two-lane and about 10 metre wide. It has thus been a nightmare for the tens of hundreds of daily motorists for the past several years.
This is in the wake of the expansion and industrial boom in the towns of Baddi, Barotiwala and Nalagarh in Himachal which also saw a humongous increase in the volume of vehicular traffic, especially that of the heavy vehicles over the past several years. This caused harrowing times to the motorists the in the congested Pinjore area of Panchkula district in Haryana, as well since.
A dire need was thus felt to have of at least four-lane national highway so as to avoid heavy traffic coming from Ambala, Chandigarh going to the said industrial areas towards Nalagarh through the congested Pinjore.
Hence, the new upcoming four-lane NH. The same starts off from near Amravati Enclave (Surajpur) ahead of Pinjore and which runs parallel to rivulet Jhajhra before joining the existing NH after bypassing Pinjore for about five kilometres.
Haryana has completed almost the entire about 7.7 km stretch of the new four-lane highway since the beginning of the project in 2018 at a cost of about Rs 140.84 crore while the cost on the Himachal Pradesh project is estimated to be about Rs 835 crore.
The Haryana public works department (roads and buildings), is the executing agency for the Pinjore bypass stretch while the total length of the project in Himachal Pradesh is about 31.195 km. the new four-lane highway would be 9 metres each side.
According to the plans, there said NH would have four major bridges, 15 minor bridges and a stretch of elevated highway structure in Baddi town. The tenders were invited by the project director, national highways authority of India, Simla in August 2021, which are likely to be awarded shortly while the likely date of the completion of this project is by mid-2024.
