Dwarka Expressway cost 14 times more than approved amount, says CAG

Flagging the “very high” civil cost of Dwarka Expressway, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) said that the project built under the Centre’s Bharatmala Pariyojana phase-1, has exceeded the amount approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) by 14 times.

The CAG, in its annual report has said that National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) Board approved the Dwarka Expressway with civil cost of Rs 7,287.29 crore with per km Rs 250.77 crore as against per km civil cost of Rs 18.20 crore approved by CCEA.

The report also revealed that the Delhi-Vadodara Expressway with civil cost of around Rs 32,839 crore which was not included in the CCEA approved list of BPP-I projects was approved at the level of NHAI Board.

“NHAI, which was developing 70,950 km of national highways length out of 76,999 km of national highways length determined for BPP-I, was also delegated the power to decide the mode of construction of the projects being implemented by it. Audit observed that the decisions on mode of construction were being taken by NHAI without any valid justification on record,” the CAG report said.

Saying that the “audit further observed that before delegating the powers to decide the mode of construction of projects, the appraisal and approval mechanism proposed to CCEA did not define the term ‘project’ and ‘package’ CAG pointed out, “For taking decision on mode of construction, whether the packages in which a single project was divided for construction purposes would constitute separate projects or all packages combined would constitute a single project was not clearly defined.”

The appraisal and approval mechanism prescribed by the CCEA for BPP-I was not being followed by implementing agencies, the report said.

“Out of 50 sample projects of NHAI, in case of eight projects, appraisal by Project Appraisal and Technical Scrutiny Committee was not done due to either these being appraised under old NHDP programme or they being balance works/ one time improvement works,” it said.

For 35 projects out of 50 projects, the notice inviting tender were floated without there being any technical and financial appraisal of projects by Project Appraisal and Technical Scrutiny Committee as the same was done afterwards, the report added.

“Out of these 35 sample projects, in case of two projects viz, Shamli-Muzaffarnagar (Pkg-II) and Delhi-Vadodara Expressway (Pkg -18), the Project Appraisal and Technical Scrutiny Committee did not include any expert from NITI Aayog,” it said.

The CAG audit further observed that out of 50 sample projects of NHAI, 46 projects were approved by competent authority after a period ranging from seven days to 404 days of floating of notice inviting tender for these projects.