A week after the Ministry of Defence agreed to give 0.66 acres of its land in Trichy city to achieve the Trichy junction RoB work, which has been pending for seven years, the state highways department (project division) has invited bids to complete the work. As a part of the plan, the service roads of the RoB interlinking Chennai, Madurai, Dindigul national highways and city roads are slated to be improved. State highways sources told the media that they are in discussions with the office of the defence estate officer in Chennai to ink a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the state government and the defence ministry. The MoU is compulsory to achieve the land transfer and to meet the demands of the defence ministry that asked for equal value infrastructure in exchange for the Rs 8.45 crore worth defence land in Mannarpuram. Within a month, they will pick a suitable agency to implement the civil work, an official with the state highways told the media. The project division of the state highways will achieve the hanging Chennai arm and build a compound wall of the defence property near the RoB. The value of the pending work is evaluated at Rs 3 crore. The 12-metre wide lanes of the RoB must be increased further by 134 metres after the defence ministry officially cedes the property. The rain-ravaged service roads of the RoB will additionally be overhauled since five years have passed since they were laid. The highways department is expected to roll out the pending work in January 2022 and achieve it by about April 2022. A 7-metre wide service road would come up adjacent to the Chennai arm to help the vehicles moving from Madurai-Trichy-Chennai NH to reach E Pudur and Crawford areas. Image Source