The much-awaited bypass road at Thiruvalla will be thrown open to the public on Sunday.
Public Works Minister G. Sudhakaran will inaugurate the new road at a function to be held here at 9.30 a.m. Thiruvalla MLA Mathew T. Thomas and Anto Antony, MP, will be also present on the occasion.
The 2.3-km-long stretch, which starts from Mazhuvangad on MC Road and ends at Ramanchira, enters the Thiruvalla-Kozhencherry (TK) road via the B1B1 road and enables vehicles proceeding from Chengannur and Kottayam to continue their onward journey along the TK Road without entering the town.
The bypass, which is also connected to the Thiruvalla-Mallappally road, will enable vehicles from Mallappally, Chengannur and Kozhencherry directions to proceed toward their respective onward destinations without entering the Thiruvalla town.
The work on the ₹33-crore bypass project was formally launched by former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy in December 2014, fixing October 2016 as the deadline for its completion. However, the project had got into legal wrangles over land acquisition. This, coupled with the abandoning of the work midway by the contractor two years ago, badly affected the project.
The Kerala State Transport Project, which carried out the work, had to change the design of the road on its northern end portion owing to certain technical flaws in the earlier plan. Though the original proposal was to earth-fill a 750-metre stretch of the bypass near Ramanchira, engineers suggested a flyover there, linking Chilanka Junction on the Thiruvalla-Mallappally road with Ramanchira on MC Road.
Following this, the project was re-launched in January 2019 with an approval from the World Bank, that funded the project. The work suffered further delays due to the COVID-19 lockdown.
