State municipal affairs and urban development minister Firhad Hakim played the development card on Monday to draw support from Siliguri residents and simultaneously criticised the Centre for delaying a highway-widening project that he said could have eased traffic snarls in a major part of the city.
Hakim, here to attend a Mahatma Gandhi statue-unveiling programme organised by Siliguri Municipal Corporation, claimed that the Narendra Modi government had not taken up the task to widen a stretch of NH31 that runs through the northern end of the city.
In Siliguri, acute traffic congestion in and around Darjeeling More — the principal entry point to the city and the junction of NH31 and NH55 — is a major problem.
