‘Govt saved 12% on costs in Dwarka Expressway project’
NEW DELHI : Centre saved about 12% in construction cost of the country’s first eight-lane, four-level Dwarka Expressway project from the initial estimates and the findings of official auditor CAG that the project cost was exorbitant and much higher than established cost structure, is misplaced, a person in the ministry of road transport and highways said on Wednesday. The person, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that all four packages of Dwarka Expressway were put for tender at an average civil cost of ₹206.39 crore per km but the contracts were finally awarded at a lower rate of ₹181.94 crore per km, thereby making a saving from the initial estimates.
In its report tabled during the just concluded monsoon session of Parliament, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has found that the National Highways Authority of India’s (NHAI) decision to go for an elevated carriageway on the Haryana portion of the Dwarka Expressway pushed up the construction cost to ₹251 crore per km from ₹18.2 crore per km estimated earlier. The audit report on the implementation of Phase-I of the ‘Bharatmala Pariyojana’ highway projects, triggered a political row with the opposition parties alleging corruption in the process of awarding the project that resulted in sharp escalation in project cost.
The official said the sharp difference in actual project cost and CAG estimates has come as the official auditor simply divided the total cost of construction of ₹91,000 crore under National Corridor Efficiency Programme with the project’s entire length of 5,000 km under development that brings the cost per km to about ₹18.2 crore. Actually, the auditor’s report did not take into account the cost of land acquisition and cost of building
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