NA expedites construction work at Ktm-Terai Expressway

Nijgadh, Feb. 3:

The Nepal Army has cleared the forest at the Nijgadh subsection of the 76-kilometre Kathmandu-Terai Expressway and begun landfilling and compressing the road.

Currently, the NA is working on a 3-kilometre section at Nijgadh of Bara district in south central Nepal, starting from the Mahendra Highway, where road filling and levelling works are underway.

An 8-km stretch of the road project has already been cleared, and preliminary works are being carried out. 

“We have expedited the construction works here because the road filling work has to be finished before the monsoon, otherwise the road will be filled with water, and we might have to wait for about four months,” said Bharat Lal Shrestha, Lieutenant Colonel of the NA and the project’s Sector 2 Commander. 

The project aims to complete the earth filling works by June end.

The height of the road will be about 2 metres from the land level, and road filling and compression is done at every 15-inch thickness. 

The engineers had tested the compression level on the first 50 metres of the road on Friday and found it to be of the required standard. 

Chief of the project’s Camp at Nijgadh, Ramesh Marasini, said that the filling materials were being brought from Mauri Bheer (cliff), situated at the foothills about 8 km away.

“The materials of Mauri Bheer were tested and approved for use on the expressway. We fill the road about 15 inches and compress it, and the process is repeated until the desired height is achieved,” he said. 

The NA has expedited the construction of the national pride project, also known as the Fast Track Road, since January this year by clearing the trees on the road’s right of way starting from the Mahendra Highway at Nijgadh towards the north. 

However, the Army has not chopped down all the trees on the road right of way (RoW). It has cleared only about 30 metres in width while the expressway is 100 metres RoW in the Terai. 

The project wanted to keep the trees as far as possible. They are to be cut as per the necessity in the future. 

Brigadier General Bharat Bahadur Khadka is leading a troop of more than 150 army personnel to cut down the trees and clear the forest areas. 

Even though there are 5,500 trees on the RoW of the expressway, only 3,900 trees have been cut in the Nijgadh area, said Khadka, who is now working at Budune of Makwanpur district.

“About 15 km in area remains to be cleared. As we have a large team from the army and needed cooperation from the concerned government agencies, such as the Department of Forests, the work will conclude soon,” he said. 

As many as 15,000 trees need to be chopped down for the project.

The NA had opened an 80-km-long track of the multi-billion-rupee project five years ago.

Erstwhile Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda had laid the foundation stone for the expressway - the shortest route connecting the capital city with the Terai - in May last year.

The government had, through a Cabinet decision, handed over the road project to the NA in August 2017, and the latter aims at completing the national pride project in four years. 

After more than five years of dilly-dallying about how to build the road and the financial modality to be adopted, the KP Sharma Oli administration had announced that the expressway would be built by Nepal itself.

Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 4 February 2018.