Another gift to poll-bound Bihar, PM Modi to lay foundation stone of 9 highway projects

In another gift to poll-bound Bihar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lay the foundation stone of nine highway projects through video conferencing on Monday.

The PM will also inaugurate optical fibre internet services under which all the 45,945 villages of Bihar will be connected through optical fibre internet service.

A statement from PMO said that the nine highway projects involve a road length of about 350 kilometres at a cost of Rs 14,258 crore.

It said these roads will enhance better connectivity, convenience and economic growth in and around the state and movement of people and goods will also improve substantially, especially with the neighbouring States of Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand.

Modi had declared a special package for significant infrastructure development of Bihar in the year 2015. This included 75 projects worth Rs 54,700 crore, of which 13 projects have been completed, work is undergoing at 38 and others are in the DPR/bidding/sanction stage.

With the completion of these projects, all rivers in Bihar will have bridges conforming to 21st-century specifications, and all major NHs will stand widened and strengthened, the release said.

"Under the PM's package, total number of bridges over river Ganga are going to be 17, with a lane capacity of 62. This way, on an average, there will be a bridge over rivers in the state at every 25 km," it said.

The release said that Optical Fibre internet services is a prestigious project covering all 45,945 villages of Bihar which will enable a digital revolution to reach the farthest corner of the state. This project will be executed by combined efforts of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and Common Service Centres (CSC).

CSC has 34,821 centres throughout Bihar."They will utilise this workforce to not only implement this project but also make it professionally run to provide Optical Fibre Internet Services for common citizens at every village of Bihar. The project would also entail implementation of one wi-fi and five free-of-cost connections to government Institutions like primary schools, anganwadi centres, Aasha workers and Jeevika Didi," the release said.

"This project will lead to digital services like e-education, e-agriculture, tele-medicine, tele-law and other social security schemes to be easily available to all citizens of Bihar at the click of the button," it added.