Court allows bridge on the Pingalai river

The Delhi high court on Tuesday gave a green signal to a project dealing with the construction of a high-level bridge on the existing Nagpur-Edlabad road section of the NH 6, which crosses the Pingalai river in Maharashtra.

A division bench of justices Gita Mittal and Indermeet Kaur dismissed the plea of VHCPL-ADCC Pingalai Infrastructure private limited that had challenged the awarding of the contract for this project to another company, and also imposed a fine of Rs2 lakh on the company for causing unnecessary delays.

According to the Maharashtra government, the need of the existing project is to ease the increased traffic movement on the stretch. The existing bridge gets inundated during heavy floods and the flow of traffic is interrupted for 4 to 6 hours at a stretch.

“It is not possible to arrive at an actual figurative computation of the damages which would have resulted on account of the delay in the execution of the project. The petitioner mouthed its objections and approached this court only after the entire tendering process was over. Delay in the completion of this project would have an impact on the interest of the users of this stretch,” the court said.

The bench also pointed out a supreme court ruling that said that belated petitions should not be considered in such cases.