Construction on Trimbakeshwar road
Officials are speeding up work for Kumbh Mela 2015 which will be taking place in April 2015. The progress of work was quite sluggish before because of some technical reasons but it has revitalized now. The water resource department is about to finish the foundation work for the construction of Ghats in the next fortnight, which is considered to be pacing up at a considerable speed. The department will then start the work of laying beams and slabs on the Ghats. Said the water resource department official “Work on the Kumbh infrastructure has been revived and is in full swing. The foundation work for the Ghats being constructed on the banks of river Godavari will be completed within 15 days. Thereafter, we will begin the second phase of the work, which will include construction of beams and placing of slabs.”
During the weekly review meeting of the work for Kumbh Mela 2015 held on Tuesday, the authorities discussed the provisions. Uncertain behavior of rains in September and October had caused undue delay in the construction work. So the pace of development work has picked up after the end of monsoon. One of reasons why infrastructure work has been marginally affected is employees across the government agencies, who were hypothetically involved in the election process. Since now that the elections are over, the officers are about to begin with the infrastructure work too. Additional collector and Kumbh Mela officer RK Gawade said “As of now all the employees are busy with the election process. Though ground work on the projects has begun, it will take hardly any time for the officers of the respective government agencies to focus on the infrastructure work.”
Construction of roads for Kumbh Mela 2015
By now, ground work of projects of every department is started. Ground work projects include water resource department (WRD), public works department (PWD) in terms of constructing roads, the Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran that will implement a water supply scheme for Trimbakeshwar, the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) as well as the railways. Fifty percent of the work has been completed on construction of an additional platform for the railways.
The construction of other passenger amenities like the bus service (MSRTC) during Kumbh has been completed. The Nashik Road bus depot with a repair and maintenance facility can handle more than 240 buses. Says Shivaji Pawar, divisional engineer of MSRTC, “The construction work is over and the depot will soon be handed over to the mechanical department to add machinery required to carry out maintenance and repairs of the buses.” Pawar further said that the depot was the biggest in the division with 10 workstations and two bus-cleaning ramps. He added “We have completely demolished the old Nashik Road bus stand, which stood parallel to the railway station. Under the renovation, , the MSRTC is spending Rs 50 lakhs to construct the platform which will be more than 4 feet high and will have openings from the railway station-end as well. Passengers coming out from the railway station can easily see the buses parked in the front. Thus they can enter the platform with seating arrangements, rest and then proceed.” MSRTC has meanwhile requested the Nashik Municipal Corporation to construct the Sulabh urinals in the MSRTC campus so that the corporation can carry out other works.
MSRTC bus depot completed for Kumbh Mela
Besides that, work of construction of roads by PWD has also gathered momentum. Considering the progress recorded by officers on the Programme Evaluation and Reviewing Technique (PERT) and Critical Path Method (CPM), the work has been going on as planned and will meet the deadline. Officer Gawde said “The collector visited Trimbakeshwar sadhuram to review the progress of the work there and the parking area. He visited the places along with PWD officials.” He even said that the plots would be requisitioned till December 31. The rent amount given to the landlords will be decided by the committee set up under the leadership of PWD officials. A report on the amount that has to be paid to the landlords for the process is awaited.
