The Hindu Business Line : Ministry plea to States on highways scheme

New Delhi, June 25 In order to speed up the national highways development programme (NHDP) implementation, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has urged the States to take care of critical issues, which involve a number of pre-construction activities like land acquisition, shifting of utilities, forest clearances and other approvals from various agencies.

In a conference of ministers in charge of national highways, the Central Ministry pointed out that delays in these activities have become serious bottlenecks in achieving timely completion of the projects. Besides, works have been stalled for want of facilities or due to resistance for payment of user fee (toll) at many places.

“We need your active co-operation and personal intervention to address these problems, so as to together achieve the ambitious targets we have set out for ourselves,” the Union Minister of Shipping, Road Transport and Highways, Mr T. R. Baalu, said in a statement.

The conference was organised to discuss issues such as preparation and updating National Highway Land Registers, removal of encroachments from the right of way, land acquisition, tree cutting and shifting of utilities and enhancement of road safety-related issues for the national highways both under NHDP and Non-NHDP.

Mr Baalu also urged the States to fully utilise the funds allocated to them for the maintenance and repairs of the national highways and under the Centrally sponsored schemes for development of State roads, such as the Central Road Fund (CRF) and the Economic Importance and Inter-State Connectivity Schemes.

During 2008-09, the total accrual under CRF is Rs 1,671.64 crore and the available allocation under EI & ISC works is Rs 185.74 crore.

The Minister also stressed on the steps to increase road safety, pointing out that in 2006, there were around 4.6 lakh road accidents that killed 1,05,749 people and injured close to five lakh persons in India.

These numbers translate into one road accident every minute and one road accident death every five minutes for India. At the prices of year 2000, it amounted to 3 per cent of GDP — which in financial terms comes to Rs 55,000 crore a year, he said.

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