The Centre has approved six national highway projects measuring about 500 km for Madhya Pradesh after Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s letter to Union Road Transport and Highways (RTH) Minister CP Joshi and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee last year. The total project cost of these projects, to be awarded under public-private partnership (PPP) mode, is over Rs 2,917 crore. Two projects have been approved by the Finance Minister while the other four by the RTH Minister. Besides these, the Centre has also cleared four projects for Rajasthan, the home State of the RTH Minister. Sources said four of the six projects in Madhya Pradesh have already been awarded to different agencies, bids are being received for the remaining two, which have been approved by Mukherjee. These projects form just a portion of the length of the highways for which Chouhan had written the letters to the two Union Ministers. The Madhya Pradesh CM had demanded repair of 10 national highways measuring about 3,800 km. The State Government had first requested to repair the highways. When the request went unheeded, the State Cabinet passed a resolution in August last year requesting the Centre to de-notify the 10 national highways so that the State could undertake the repair work through MP Road Development Corporation (MPRDC). Chouhan wrote a letter to Joshi on August 11 and requested him to hand over the national highways to the State. He complained that the RTH Ministry was neither repairing the roads nor was allowing the State Government to carry out the maintenance work on its own. He rued that only Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are the only two States which have not been allowed by RTH Ministry to maintain the highways on their own. In his letter to Joshi, Chouhan had also attached photographs of patches of highways which showed that that they had become non-motorable and were causing mishaps and traffic blockades. A total length of 4,709 km passes through the State. The patches include Gwalior-Dewas; Rewa-Lakhandon; Jabalpur-Bhopal; Biaora to Rajgarh (up to Rajasthan border); Indore-Betul; Obaidullaganj-Betul; Katni-Shahdol-Anuppur (Chhattisgarh border); Sagar-Chhatarpur (Uttar Pradesh border) and Bhopal-Raisen-Salamatpur-Sanchi. After his letter to Joshi, the MP CM wrote another one to Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee in August itself accusing the RTH officials of “non-cooperation” and “obstructive attitude”. In this letter, Chouhan gave the example of Bameetha-Satna road for which approval was awaited for over six months. Chouhan pointed out that the Centre had earlier de-notified the busy Bhopal-Dewas and the Lebad-Ratlam-Jaora-Neemuch-Nayagaon stretches, after which the State Government constructed four-lane roads.