The central government has given a big blow to Punjab. The central government has canceled the ‘Pradhan Mantri Sadak Yojana’ project worth about Rs 800 crore for Punjab. Under this scheme, 64 roads were to be upgraded using environmentally friendly FDR technology and 38 bridges of more than 15 meters length were to be built. This project was approved on March 31, but on July 1, the Joint Secretary of the Union Rural Development Ministry issued a letter stating that the works for which tenders or construction have not started are canceled. This has affected Punjab’s Rs 828.87 crore project.
Among the cancelled works, there are many roads on which bridges were to be built, but cancellation of approval of the bridges will cause inconvenience to the local people. Similarly, the upgradation of 64 roads is also now hanging in the balance. The states in which work has started have been allowed to complete the project by 31 March 2026.
On July 21, Punjab Public Works Department Secretary Dr. Ravi Bhagat wrote a letter to the Union Rural Development Ministry requesting to approve the works again. He said that new technology has to be used in the project, and there are very few consultancy companies with experience in it, so the tender process took time. He says that if this work is stopped, then there will be discontent among the people, because the condition of the roads is already bad.
The letter mentions that many of the roads included in the project are in the border districts of Pathankot, Amritsar, Gurdaspur and Tarn Taran, and their closure may also anger the local MPs. Earlier also, the central government has stopped about Rs 7,000 crore of Punjab’s rural development fund for the last four years, due to which the work of link roads in the state is getting delayed. Now the Punjab government has had to take loans to repair these roads. Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann has also recently written a letter to Union Rural Development Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan requesting him to approve the Rs 828 crore project of Pradhan Mantri Sadak Yojana-3.