Deplorable condition of NH 44
Agartala: Assam and Meghalaya have accused each other for deplorable condition of National Highway-44 in both the states.
With this, transportation of foodgrain, petroleum products and essential items to the southern locations of Northeast has been affected as gauge conversion work of Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) was started and train service in the two states were suspended for past fortnight.
All the southern locations of the region have been hit by serious shortage of petroleum products and stock of foodgrain because of poor condition of the national highway.
Cabinet Secretary Ajit Seth called a video conferencing meeting on Monday with Chief Secretaries of Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur, Meghalaya and Assam to review the situation.
Chief Secretary of Assam and top officials of the Road and Highway Ministry, who were blamed for the poor condition of the National Highway, abstained from attending the meeting. Instead they deputed new and junior officers in the meeting that did not yield any meaningful solution.
Later, Tripura Chief Secretary G K Rao said about 160 km of road from Churaibari in northern exit of Tripura to Shillong was in bad shape and became accident prone and risky for travelling but both Meghalaya and Assam did not make any effort to repair it for past few years.
The Ministry officials said for repairing the highway Rs 45 crore was sanctioned to Assam of which Rs 10 crore had already been released long back but the state did not do anything.
Similarly, Meghalaya was sanctioned Rs 25 crore, of which Rs 5 core has been released to the state for repairing of the highway but nothing was done so far.
Rather both the states, whenever the issue of the highway came, used to send new officers to drag the issue, alleged Tripura Transport Minister Manik Dey.
“Everyday there are at least 7-10 road accidents on the highway in Assam and Meghalaya only because of bad condition of roads and in every case, the respective state government blames drivers of the vehicles and police report was also going in the same line,” Dey said adding that the government neither considered the accidents nor bother to improve the roads. (UNI)