December 31: The government has approved the Kathmandu-Tarai Expressway (Fast Track) Project to cut trees to expedite the construction work. A meeting of the Council of Ministers on Thursday approved the felling of 4,345 trees in the forest areas of Makwanpur and Bara districts.

The cabinet meeting also approved the project to use 40.19 hectares of the forest land for the construction of the strategic road that is expected to shorten the distance between the capital and the southern Tarai districts.

The government had entrusted the project management to the army on May 4, 2017. The foundation stone was laid by the then Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal on May 28 the same year. According to the last extended deadline, the project should be completed by mid-April 2027.

Chief of Army Staff Prabhu Ram Sharma had recently informed the State Affairs and Good Governance Committee of the House of Representatives that the project had been delayed because the army was awaiting approval for cutting trees since nine months

He told the House committee that the government had instructed the army to complete the expressway on time, but it was yet to implement the legal provisions to facilitate felling trees.

“It is ironic to say that we need to do the work on a war footing on the basis of outdated laws drafted in 2017. If this is the case, the fast track will not be built by 2027,” Sharma had told the committee on December 20.

According to the army, the financial progress of the expressway with an estimated cost of Rs 211.93 billion stands at 29.44 percent. In the current fiscal year, the physical progress of the expressway has reached 32.66 percent. The army claims that this year's financial progress is 10.8 percent.

The army has divided the work in 13 packages for the expressway. Five of them have not been contracted yet.

Along the fast track, there is one forest in Kathmandu, one in Lalitpur, in 22 Makwanpur and five in Bara.