Work on the Loknayak Ganga Path or Digha-Deedarganj high-speed corridor in Patna will begin within two months and finish the same within three-and-a-half years, six months before the deadline, said the Navayuga Engineering Company (NEC) that has bagged the expressway contract. The contract amount is Rs 1,777.73 crore.    After the Chief Minister Nitish Kumar laid the foundation stone to the project on October 11, NEC MD C Shreedhar said in compliance with the chief minister's wish that locals be employed for the construction work. The company would recruit 70 per cent local workforce.    He added that only the technical expertise would come from the company's corporate headquarters in Hyderabad. NEC also has the contracts for civil works of NTPC's Barh power plant and for constructing 5.5-km bridge across the Ganga connecting Bakhtiarpur in Patna to Tajpur in Samastipur.    According to Shreedhar, the construction work on the marine part of the corridor was a tad challenging and would start first. Once the designs and layouts are approved and the company will cross-check the data provided by the State government, the project work would commence under NEC's Bihar in charge C H S N Raju, said Shreedhar.