Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday laid the foundation stone for nine National Highway Projects worth Rs 14000 crore in Bihar and launched the project to provide internet services through Optical Fibre in the state through video conferencing.
Speaking on the occasion, the Prime Minister said these highway projects would improve the connectivity in Bihar. The highway projects include construction of 3 large bridges, upgrading of highways into 4 lanes and 6 lanes. He said all rivers in Bihar will have bridges confirming to 21st century specifications and all major NHs will stand widened and strengthened
The Prime Minister termed the day as not only historic for Bihar but for the entire country as the Government is taking major steps to make its villages the mainstay of AtmaNirbharBharat and that this is starting from Bihar today. He said under this project 6 Lakh villages would be provided internet services through Optical Fibre cable in 1000 days.
The Prime Minister said India is one of the leading countries in the world in terms of digital transactions. In August 2020 alone about Rs 3 Lakh Crore worth transactions were made through UPI. With the increase in internet usage, now it is also necessary that the villages of the country have good quality, high speed internet.
He said because of the efforts of the government optical fiber has already reached about 1.5 lakh Village Panchayats and more than 3 lakhs Common Service Centers.
Explaining the benefits that accrue through the speedier connectivity, Prime Minister said it would provide access to best of the reading material to the students, along with access to tele-medicine and access to information on seeds, new techniques nationwide markets to the farmers apart from real time data on weather conditions. Farmers can also easily transport their produce all over the country and world, he said.
The Prime Minister said the aim of the Government is to provide Urban facilities to Rural Areas in the country.
He said infrastructure planning was lopsided earlier and that its development was given a proper thrust only when Atal Behari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister, who gave priority to infrastructure over politics.
The Prime Minister said that the approach now is to develop a Multi-Modal Transport Network where each mode of transport is linked to the other. The scale at which work is now being done on infrastructure related projects, the speed at which work is being done is unprecedented. Today, highways are being built at twice the speed than before 2014. Compared to the period before 2014 there has been 5 times increase in the expenditure of highway construction.
He said the Government has announced to spend more than Rs 110 Lakh Crore on infrastructure in the coming 4-5 years. Out of this, projects worth more than Rs 19 lakh crore are allocated for the development of Highways alone.
He said the biggest obstacle in Bihar’s connectivity has been due to large rivers. This is the reason that special attention was paid to the construction of bridges when the PM package was announced. Under PM package 17 bridges are being built over Ganges and most of which have been completed. Similarly, bridges are being constructed on the Gandak and Kosi rivers.
The Prime Minister said the Patna ring road and the bridge parallel to Mahatma Gandhi Setu and Vikramshila setu in Patna and Bhagalpur will speed up the connectivity.
