Patna High Court Chief Justice Sanjay Karol got a taste of how vital infrastructure projects in Bihar, especially those initiated by the Centre under the special package announced and launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, are progressing at snail’s pace, inconveniencing people.

Karol has sought reports on the reasons behind the present condition of National Highway-83 that connects Patna to Gaya and Dobhi, after encountering a back-breaking journey on Monday.

He had gone to Gaya on an administrative tour, but had to leave his car there and return by train because of the potholes and ditches he encountered during the road journey.

A peeved chief justice said he could not muster the courage to take the road journey back to Patna and endure the same hardship. He commented that a report submitted by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) on the road was beyond reality.

Karol has ordered additional solicitor general Satyadarshi Sanjay and additional advocate general Anjani Kumar to take NHAI officials to the 105km-long NH-83 and submit a report on its present condition. They will be visiting the national highway on Thursday. The chief justice has also asked senior advocates of the high court to inspect the highway and submit an independent report to him. The matter will be heard next on December 20.

Incidentally, NH-83 is to be converted into a four-lane national highway and the project is part of the Prime Minister’s special package of Rs 1.65 lakh crore for Bihar, announced in the run-up to 2015 Assembly elections. Around Rs 55,000 crore of the special package is to be spent on roads and bridges.

The Patna – Gaya – Dobhi NH-83 widening work was among the projects that were bunched together and launched by Modi during his visit to Patna in 2017.

However, according to NHAI officials, work for the widening of NH-83 was awarded to IL&FS and it started in 2015 with a deadline to complete it by 2019. “However, the work by IL&FS was slow and poor. It finally stopped work in October 2018. Since maintenance of the highway was part of the contract, it also was not done leading to deterioration of long stretches of the road,” a senior official of NHAI told The Telegraph on the condition of anonymity.

The NHAI official added that around 41km stretch of the road is beyond repair now and the entire crust will have to be removed and laid afresh.

However, project director and NHAI deputy general manager Prabhat Ranjan Pandey said: “We had filled the potholes, but was washed away in the rains. Besides, overloaded trucks keep plying on the road, damaging it further. The widening project has been delayed because the contractor – IL&FS – ran away.”

Pandey added that there were other reasons for the delay like “land has not been fully acquired by the state government, due to which many contractors refuse to work.”