The Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Development of North-Eastern Region (DoNER) Dr. Jitendra Singh said that the road projects under Special Accelerated Road Development Programme for North East (SARDP-NE) including Arunachal Package for Roads & Highways have been implemented. This was stated by the minister during the Rajya Sabha session
Dr. Jitendra Singh said, “Under Arunachal Package out of total 2319 km road length worth Rs.15,643 crore approved by Government, road length of 1934 km has been sanctioned and out of which 928 km has been completed so far.”
In his reply, he added that for air connectivity, Government has laid down route dispersal guidelines with a view to achieving better regulation of air transport services taking into account the need of air transport services of different regions of the country.
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“It is, however, up to the airlines to provide air services to specific places depending upon the traffic demand and commercial viability. As such, the airlines are free to operate anywhere in the country subject to compliance of route dispersal guidelines issued by Government,” he added.
As per his statement, new line Capital Connectivity railway projects have been initiated for all the capital cities of North East since 2003-04. Railways have taken many steps in last three years to expedite the execution of these capital connectivity projects and monitoring of projects is being done at various levels (field level, Divisional level, Zonal level, and Board level). Concept of incentives to the contractor has also been adopted by Railways to enhance the pace of execution of projects. Further, for important projects, capacity enhancement projects, last-mile connectivity projects, etc., institutional financing has been done by arranging a loan of Rs.1.5 lakh crore, which has increased Railways’ capacity for committed fund provision for essential projects.
Among others, M/o Road, Transport and Highways and M/o Railways has incurred Rs.12,215.00 crore under SARDP-NE and Rs.17,048.00 crore respectively in the last three years for improving THE connectivity infrastructure in the Northeastern Region.