DW BUREAU / Chandigarh Haryana Chief Minister, Sh. Manohar Lal while addressing a press conference here today announced that from now onwards, the construction of new roads in urban areas will be done on a 50:50 share basis between State Government and Urban Local Bodies. He said that the decision has been taken due to the problem of paucity of funds being faced by the ULBs. The Chief Minister said that according to the demands of the people in the cities, roads having a cumulative length of 506 km would be constructed and repaired by the Urban Local Bodies Department, which would cost Rs 141 crore. Necessary directions have been given to the Urban Local Bodies Department to float the tenders for the proposed roads in the next 15 days, informed Sh. Manohar Lal. Haryana State Agricultural Marketing Board to construct 313 roads of about 850 km length The Chief Minister informed that as many as 313 roads having a cumulative length of 850 will be constructed by the Haryana State Agricultural Marketing Board, on which about Rs.425 crore will be spent. The new roads will be built using blacktop technology in place of earlier used WBM technology. This will ensure the smooth movement of traffic along with removing the problem of water puddling, informed Sh. Manohar Lal. He said that the marketing board construct the roads from the income earned by the market fees. But the income from market fees has come down for some time, so an additional interest-free grant of Rs. 150 crores will be allocated to the Marketing Board from HRDF find for the construction of these roads. The Chief Minister informed that by March 31, 2024, the construction and repair work of all the roads leading to the Mandis would be completed. Besides this, after the construction of the new road, the responsibility for the maintenance of these roads would be entrusted to the Zilla Parishad. (editor@dailyworld.in)