Chinese firm may take up six-laning of B'luru-Mysuru Rd

Chinese firm Shandong International has expressed interest to take up the project of upgrading the Bengaluru-Mysuru Road into a six-lane National Highway.

A Chinese delegation led by Sun Yechang, project manager, J Kannabiran, project coordinator and others on Thursday made a presentation in the presence of Chief Minister Siddramaiah, Infrastructure Development Minister Roshan Baig on projects the firm has executed in China. The team will also meet M R Kamble, principal secretary, Public Works Department (PWD) to discuss the project, which is estimated to cost around Rs 6,000 crore.

Baig said that the Chinese company will participate in the Global Investors Meet (GIM) in November to take the discussion further. He added that these are just preliminary talks and a detailed plan in this regard still needs to be made.

During the meeting, the proposed three express elevated highways from Hebbal to Central Silk board (16 km), K R Puram to Goraguntepalya (21 km) and Jnanabharathi to Whitefield (27 km), were also discussed. Officials said that the BBMP is preparing a Detailed Project Report (DPR) in this regard and Rs 50 crore has been sanctioned for the purpose.

The matter pertaining to curves on the Bengaluru-Mysuru stretch that are a hurdle in providing high-speed rail connectivity on the Mysuru-Bengaluru-Chennai route also came up for discussions. Officials of the Infrastructure development department said that there was a need to get rid of the curves to be able to run high-speed trains. 

Shandong group was incorporated in 2001 with a registered capital of 300 million yuan and total assets of less than 6 billion yuan. The group grew into an extra large enterprise group with a registered capital of 20 billion yuan and annual revenue of nearly 45 billion yuan. At present, the group is running 2,800 km of opened railways, 600 km of expressways, 482 km of opened railways and 743 km of railways are under construction.

Jiaozhou Bay Bridge, the longest sea crossing bridge in the world, was constructed, operated and managed by the group. Beijing-Shanghai high speed train, Parliament building in Chad and the Yangtze river bridge were also constructed by the group.