PATNA, Feb. 11 -- Road construction minister Dilip Jaiswal on Tuesday said that the government was committed to taking the vastly improved road network in the state to the next level with the help of a number of mega projects already in implementation stage due to centre-state initiatives. "The effort is to further reduce travel time. To achieve this, the penetration of wide road network will be extended to across the state and all roads will be a minimum of two lanes and those already two-lane will be widened to four lanes. Besides, around 3,000-km of road will be brought under state highways," he added. Jaiswal was giving the government reply on the road construction department's budgetary allocation of Rs.8,260.16-crore, which was passed by voice vote after the Opposition's walkout. Jaiswal holds the portfolio of road construction department, which was last year with Nitin Nabin, the present BJP national president who also attended the House in the first half. Jaiswal said that the department was working on a comprehensive roadmap, which includes widening of roads, construction of bridges and underpass, development of ring roads, expressways and high speed corridors to connect all parts of the state and make commutation easier for the people by reducing travel time to four hours to Patna from any part of the state. Listing a number of projects work on which is on or land acquisition process has commenced, the minister a high-speed expressway/four-lane road is proposed to connect Pashupatinath Temple (Kathmandu) in Nepal with Baba Baidyanath Dham (Deoghar) in Jharkhand via Valmiki Nagar (West Champaran) in Bihar. Another project to boost religious tourism would be Narayani (Gandak) to Ganga road. It will start from from Nepal through the Gandak (Narayani) river basin in Bihar to the Ganga river at Sultanganj. Both the projects would connect several districts of the state. Jaiswal said that the Gangapath in Patna would be further extended by 118 kms at an estimated cost of Rs.16,465.42-crore, which has been approved, on the eastern and western sides. It will reach up to Koilwar with an addition of 36.65 km and Munger and Sultanganj with extension of 42 kms. From Sultanganj it will be further extended by 40.80-km to Bhagalpur-Sabour. "Bihar has also built a number of railway bridges and underpasses. On the Ganga river there are already eight bridges while eight others are under construction and three more are proposed. One will be in Buxar parallel to the existing bridge, the second will be on the Razak-Hallie expressway and the third in Khalgaon," he added. The minister said the process for recruitment of engineers of various ranks and others on 1,205 posts has also been initiated....