Chandigarh: In a shocking revelation has come to fore that around 538 km of link roads in the state is “missing” in the state.
There are tenders for these ‘missing’ link roads, which are also being repaired on paper but officials didn’t find it on ground, according to a recent survey.
Crores of rupees have been spent on these ‘missing’ roads from the government treasury. Now when the mapping of link roads across Punjab was done through the new technology GIS (Geographic Information System), it was revealed that the length of roads in the state is 538 km less.
The repair work of link roads in Punjab has been going on since 1970. Earlier, the work of measuring the link roads was done manually but now these roads are being measured through GIS.
According to the details received, the total length of link roads in Punjab is 64,878 km and the network of link roads for villages is quite large, but according to GIS, the actual length of link roads has been revealed to be 64,340 km. This data is also being uploaded on the GIS portal. The nodal agency for maintenance of link roads is the Punjab Mandi Board and public works department.
The repair circle of these link roads is six years. On an average, 90 km of link roads have actually been under-repaired every year. According to government documents, the cost of repairing the link road is around Rs 15 lakh per km.
According to government records, around Rs 13.50 crore is being spent every year on these ‘missing’ roads. After the matter came to light, the AAP government has estimated that the government will now save crores of rupees by removing these ‘missing’ roads from the repair of the link roads alone. Similarly, apart from the link roads, it has also been decided to map other roads through GIS so that the actual length of the roads can be ascertained.