Darjeeling’s BJP MP Raju Bista on Tuesday blamed the Mamata Banerjee government for the delay in widening the NH31 near Darjeeling More, Siliguri’s main entry point, and said the state had not yet handed over the project report or land needed for the project to the Centre.

His assertion comes a day after Firhad Hakim, the state municipal affairs and urban development minister, said that the Centre was responsible for the project’s delay that causes perennial traffic snarls at the city’s entry point.

Hakim, who was here on Monday to attend a Gandhi statue unveiling event, had said chief minister Mamata Banerjee had spoken to Union minister of road transport and highways Nitin Gadkari about the project but the Centre was yet to initiate it. “We have even acquired the land,” Hakim had said.

Bista retorted on Tuesday that the stretch of the highway concerned was under the state PWD and not NHAI.

The MP said that on July 29 this year, he received a written communication from Gadkari stating that the “state PWD has been advised to explore the option of developing the junctions at Darjeeling More and the Siliguri town underpass to a grade-separated junction within available ROW (right of way), or provide consent for furnishing land free from encumbrances and hindrances to develop these two junctions as trumpet interchanges to facilitate the local traffic.”

A civil engineer that this paper spoke to explained that “grade separation” was a way to align a junction of two or more surface transport axes at different heights (or grades) so that they do not disrupt traffic flow to other transit routes, while “trumpet interchange” was a design used where a highway terminates to another highway (in Darjeeling More, NH55 meets NH31), and involves a loop ramp that links traffic entering or leaving the terminating highway with far lanes of the other highway.

“The state PWD is developing a detailed project report to four-lane the stretch and is yet to hand it over to the Centre. Also, the Union ministry had asked for land so that NHAI can develop the stretch but that too has not been done by the state PWD so far,” said Bista.

Widening of the road along the Darjeeling More stretch that will largely help ease traffic congestion in Siliguri can only start after the state PWD submits the DPR to the Centre, he said.

“We also want this work to start immediately. The state minister (Hakim) can also send me the details so that I can take it up with the Union minister and help resolve the issues,” the MP added.