BackIndia ready to compete with the world: PM Narendra Modi
Narendra Modi says projects such as Sagarmala and Bharatmala will prepare a strong base for infrastructure development in India
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Bharuch (Gujarat): India is going to compete with the world, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday, adding that Gujarat’s infrastructure growth story was a success that needed to be replicated by other states.
The prime minister said projects such as Sagarmala and Bharatmala will prepare a strong base for infrastructure development in the country, whereby a person would be able to travel across the country on just one road.
Modi was in Bharuch and Dahej to inaugurate two major infrastructure projects, including the largest extradosed span bridge over the River Narmada. An extradosed span bridge is one in which there’s a substantial distance between pillars, 144m in the case of the Bharuch Narmada bridge.
The other project inaugurated was a Rs30,000 crore mega petrochemical complex at Dahej in South Gujarat developed by ONGC Petro additions Ltd.
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Inaugurating the two projects, Modi said the Dahej facility is a jewel not just for Gujarat but also for India as the complex is likely to provide employment opportunity for around 800,000 people.
Modi also announced an investment of Rs12,000 crore for the upgrading state highways in Gujarat to National Highways.
Outlining the key initiatives that Gujarat government is going to take, Modi said the Vadodara Bus Port had become an example of how a poor or common man could be given an “airport experience" and this model needed to be replicated nationwide.
Modi emphasized that his government was committed to deadlines and ensured that infrastructure projects were completed either in or before time.
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Roads and highways minister Nitin Gadkari said work on the bridge was allotted by the UPA government in 2012 but the contractor, Hindustan Construction Co., had left the project midway.
“When our government came in 2014, the Gujarat chief minister asked me to take this project. We cancelled the tender and issued a fresh tender where L&T completed the bridge work in record 34 months at cost of Rs380 crore without any escalation," Gadkari said.
The 1.3km four-lane Narmada bridge is the first extradosed bridge in Gujarat, and is similar to Canada’s Golden Ears bridge. The Narmada bridge has 10 spans and is a part of a larger project involving six-laning of a section of National Highway 8 between Vadodara and Surat that will help ease freight movement between Ahmedabad and Mumbai.
According to a statement by the National Highways Authority of India, work on bridge has been completed but the project will be completed by May 2017.
The first extradosed bridge in the country was built for the Delhi Metro between Pragati Maidan and Indraprastha, over railway tracks.
The Dahej complex, commissioned in February 2017, will produce 14 lakh Polymers and is likely to see investments worth Rs40,000 crore in the coming years. It already has the country’s largest dual-feed cracker unit and the plant has the capacity to produce 1,100 kilotonnes per annum of ethylene and 400 kilotonnes per annum of propylene.
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