Three years on,Arjun Munda revisits the road made famous by Russians and finds residents residing along side positive and proud.They are free of the gangs and Maoists that plagued them and are happy to let their children play in the fields.
Three years after the four- lane road was inaugurated by him today,things have changed for the residents of Patratu-much of it for better.
Though the state owned Patratu Thermal Power Plant,built by engineers of the erstwhile Soviet Union in 1962,is still the same belching out smoke under the shadow of a spic and span plant set up last year by Jindal Steel and Power Ltd there.
This is the road CM Munda said once epitomised ‘danger zone’ in Jharkhand where outlaws robbed and looted commuters in broad day light.Its potholes made them cover 62 km in about three hours.Now,the highway,built on PPP mode by Jharkhand Accelerated Road Development Company at a cost of Rs 450 crore,can be used to cover the same distance within an hour.
After Munda inaugurated it in presence of a number of VIPs including JMM chief Shibu Soren,Chief Secretary SK Choudhary,Princpal Secretary(Road) Raj Bala Verma and Principal Secretary(Personnel and IT) NN Sinha under whose active supervision this world class highway had come up,most residents looked upbeat, positive and largely free of many of the issues that allegedly plagued them.
“This highway has already benefitted us.We have started ferrying bus between Ranchi and Patratu five times a day.In the past, we did barely two rounds”,said Ram Nagina Singh,a bus owner,echoing the sentiments of transporters,traders and farmers.
More,the wannabe gangsters who terrorized them, along with the guns and lathis,and the potholes,homes and rubbish that littered nearby,are past.
Instead there vehicles zipping off,children playing in the nearby fields, neighbours speaking with each other over their fences and people wasting little time reporting any suspected crime.
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