Contributing towards the development of the North-East region of the country, NHAI has signed concession agreement with M/s Dineshchandra R Agrawal Infracon Pvt. Ltd in presence of NHAI Chairman, Shri Santosh Kumar Yadav and senior officials of NHAI. The 121 km long Guwahati Ring Road shall be developed at a total cost of Rs. 5,729 Crore on Build Operate Toll (BOT) Mode with zero grant. The concession period of the contract is 30 years, including construction period of four years. Providing impetus to the project, the State Government of Assam will bear 50% of land cost, provide exemption from royalty on aggregates and state portion of GST contributing about Rs. 1,270 crore. Thus, the gross project cost is about Rs. 7,000 crore.
The Guwahati Ring Road project will have three sections which include 56 km long 4-lane Access-Controlled Northern Guwahati Bypass, widening of the existing 8 km bypass on NH 27 from four lanes to six lanes, and improvement of existing 58 km long bypass on NH 27. Notably, a 3 km long major bridge over river Brahmaputra will be also constructed as a part of the project.
The Guwahati Ring Road will provide seamless connectivity to long-distance traffic plying on the East-West Corridor of NH-27, which is the gateway to North-East Region of the country. The development of the Ring Road will help to decongest Guwahati City and neighboring North- Eastern states by bypassing major traffic coming from West Bengal/Bihar to Silchar, Nagaland and Tripura. The project will also provide seamless connectivity to major towns in the region including Siliguri, Silchar, Shillong, Jorhat, Tezpur, Jogigopha, and Barpeta.
The Government of India has been encouraging Public Private Partnership for Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) projects. To encourage adoption of projects on BOT mode, various modifications in the Modal Concession Agreement (MCA) of BOT(Toll) and provisional BOT(Toll) have been affected in recent past. This is the first contract signed on the basis of modified Modal Concession Agreement which will pave way for more such contracts.
As a part of Government of India’s ‘Vision 2047’, a large number of high-speed corridors are envisaged to be developed. Robust Public Private Partnership in development of road sector will play a pivotal role in realizing this vision and will greatly contribute towards the development as well as Operations and Maintenance of the world class National Highway Network in the country.