Nitin Gadkari threatens to put errant contractors ‘under bulldozer’ for bad roads
“I told many big contractors that if the quality of roads you build is bad, I will put them under a bulldozer,” Gadkari said.
Angry over the bad conditions of roads in the country, Union minister for road transport and highways Nitin Gadkari threatened to run a bulldozer over contractors.
Gadkari’s comments came during the launch of a book ‘India Inspires: Redefining the Politics of Deliverance’, which took place hours after the Supreme Court expressed concerns on India’s road quality and termed the more than 14,000 deaths in the five years on account of potholes as “unacceptable”, as the number was higher than lives lost in terror attacks.
“I told many big contractors that if the quality of roads you build is bad, I will put them under a bulldozer,” the minister said.
The union minister said road works of over Rs 10 trillion have been awarded by his ministry over the last four-and-a-half years.
Seeking to address any concerns on transparency, he said none of the contractors are forced to come to New Delhi for contracts these days.
The minister said the rate of road construction was 2 km a day when the government took over, but today, it is 28km a day and the target is to build 40km per day by March 2019.
Gadkari, who is credited for building the country’s first expressway—the Mumbai-Pune Expressway in the 1990s when he was the roads minister in Maharashtra, said 12 new expressways are under construction in India.
