Bihar Achieves All-Weather Road Connectivity to 119,816 Rural Settlements

Bihar government has taken a historic step towards strengthening rural infrastructure and has achieved the target of providing all-weather single connectivity to 1,19,816 settlements of the state. Under these schemes, a total of 1,18,511 km long rural roads have been constructed, which has made connectivity easy in every village.

It is worth noting that initially under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, the priority was to connect only villages with a population of 1,000 or more, but Bihar took the initiative in this direction and started the Chief Minister Gram Sadak Yojana in the year 2006-07 and also took the initiative to connect settlements with a population of 500 to 999 with paved roads. After this, villages with a population of 250 or more in 11 insurgency-affected districts and 500 or more in other districts were included in the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana.

In the year 2013-14, the state government launched the 'Mukhyamantri Gram Sampark Yojana' to provide road connectivity to settlements with a population of 250 or more in all the districts of the state equally.

So far, 53,283 km of roads have been constructed connecting 57,102 settlements under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana and 64,926 km of roads have been constructed connecting 63,174 settlements through other schemes including Mukhyamantri Gram Sampark Yojana, Gramin Tola Sampark Nishchay Yojana.

In the year 2023, the state government launched the 'Mukhyamantri Gramin Sampark Yojana (Remaining)', which aims to connect the remaining settlements with a population of 100 or more with all-weather single connectivity. In the review, 13,814 settlements (16,652 km) were found which were not yet connected with paved roads. Out of these, roads have been approved for 3,494 settlements (3,734 km) at a cost of Rs 4,462.49 crore. The target is to approve connectivity to about 1,800 unconnected settlements (4,500 km) at a cost of Rs 5,900 crore by the year 2025-26.

All the roads to be built under the Mukhyamantri Gramin Sampark Yojana (Remainder) are to be continuously maintained for 6 years after the completion of construction work, for which there is a provision for re-blacking in the first quarter of the fifth year, so that the rural people get better road facilities for a long time.