Nepal Army has admitted that construction of the Kathmandu-Tarai Expressway has not progressed as expected.

Presenting a list of activities it accomplished in the first half of the current fiscal year, the national defence force said construction has not progressed as desired.

“The progress is not as per the target, yet we are committed to completing the project within the deadline,” said Brigadier General Rabindra Khatri at a press conference in Kathmandu on Sunday. As of mid-January, the physical progress of the national pride project stands at 38.26 percent while financial progress is 39.84 percent. After three deferrals, the new deadline has been set for April 2027.

Despite reaffirming its commitment to bringing the highway into operation within the deadline, the army says several hurdles must be sorted out at the earliest. If not, the army warned, the deadline could be missed again.

“The Nepal Army never fails in its responsibilities. We are making continuous effort, night and day. However, heavy rainfall on September 29 and 30 not just affected the work but also forced us to revise water levels of rivers during high floods in the project area. That led to the changes in the bridges,” said Major General Kamal Bikram Shah, chief of the project.

He further said that complexities in getting the permission to clear trees have added to the problem. It took the army more than 11 months to receive the clearance, according to Shah.

The army has long been raising the issue through different platforms. Presenting a progress report to the State Affairs and Good Governance Committee of the House of Representatives in December 2023, then Chief of Army Staff Prabhu Ram Sharma had said it would be impossible to complete the project in 2027 without revising the existing Forest Act and the Land Acquisition Act.

“Delays in land acquisition have compounded the problem,” said Shah.

The Khokana area is the entry point of the project. However, the government hasn’t been able to acquire 411 ropani (20.91 hectares) of land for the expressway and an additional 300 ropani (15.26 hectares) for the construction of parking spaces and a port. In 2022, a committee under the National Planning Commission tried to convince the residents to sell their land but failed. Similarly, efforts by the parliamentary committees, too, have not yielded positive results.

The locals have been refusing to hand over their land, saying five different projects are underway in the Khokana area and this might ultimately displace them, according to the army officials. In addition to the expressway, an electricity transmission line, an outer ring road and the Bagmati Corridor pass through the area. Similarly, the government is developing Khokana into a smart city.

The Nepal Army started the construction of the Kathmandu-Tarai Expressway in August 2017, with a plan to complete it in four years. Since the project was nowhere near completion by August 2021, its deadline was extended to July 2024.

The delay in preparing and endorsing the detailed project report prompted the army to postpone the deadline to December 2024. It was then pushed further to April 2027.

Once it comes into operation, the 70.977 km highway of the Asian standard will connect the federal capital with Nijgadh in Bara in one hour. Work on the international airport being planned in Nijgadh has been stalled too following a 2022 Supreme Court order. Nine different tunnels with a combined length of 10.055 km and around 80 small and large bridges are part of the expressway.

As per the detailed project report, the estimated cost of the highway stands at Rs175 billion, including Value Added Tax, and Rs213 billion with the contingency and service charges.