Land-pooling for Outer Ring Road to conclude in 8 months

Kathmandu. Nov. 2: The Outer Ring Road Project in the Kathmandu Valley has planned to conclude the land-pooling for the first phase of the road construction at 6.6 km long Satungal-Chobhar section by the end of the current fiscal year 2017/18.

The project is finally set to begin after being about 13 years in the papers.

Project Chief Deepak Shrestha said that the file of the project was being studied by the Minister for Urban Development Dil Nath Giri.

“Minister has shown a great interest in taking the project further. We are hoping that the file would be submitted to the Cabinet next week,” he said.

The project is all set to begin the land-pooling as soon as the Cabinet approves the plan.

About 8,000 ropanis of land belong to about 14,000 owners needed to be pooled in the Satungal-Chobhar section alone.

Some 80,000 to 100,000 ropanis of land is required to be pooled for the 72 km long road project which the government had proposed in 2005 with an aim to create greater mobility and reduce traffic congestion in the Valley.

A site office for the land-pooling and other works of the project has been established in Satungal, and engineers, overseers and survey officers have been deployed.

“The project needs at least one site office at every 2-km distance. Therefore, three site offices are needed for the first phase construction of the Outer Ring Road,” said Shrestha.

According to Personal Secretary of the Minister of State at the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) Kunti Kumari Shahi, Dhruba Sapkota, who was long associated with the project, as the minister is very positive about the project, the dream of the Outer Ring Road will begin soon.

The MoUD had approved the Detailed Project Report (DPR) of the Satungal-Chobhar section of the Outer Ring Road in April this year, and had asked the Kathmandu Valley Development Authority (KVDA) to work on it.

The project had concluded the DPR of 68 km part of the road about six years ago.

DPR of Chapali Height to Gokarna section is yet to be developed, said Sapkota.

The KVDA plans to finish the land-pooling and construct gravel road in a decade from the commencement date. The total project cost is estimated at Rs. 72 billion.

According to Sapkota, the project will be developed by the domestic contractors, and the bridges will be contracted to foreign developers.

There will be flyover roads at most of the crossings in the Outer Ring Road, so there won’t be any traffic congestion.

The Outer Ring Road will go through Chobhar, Satungal, Naikap, Sitapaila, Nagarjun, Gongabu, Chapali, Kapan, Sandol in Kathmandu, Lubhu, Dhapakhel, Thecho, Gungmati and Chobhar in Lalitpur, and Gamphedi, Bansbari, Yangdol, Masandol,Naya Thimi and Dadhikot in Bhaktapur.