NHAI accelerates on land acquisition offices

The National Highways Authority of India, in its attempt to deliver 20 km a day of road construction, has moved forward in implementing its plan of opening 150 special land acquisition units and 10 regional offices across the country. Acquiring land for road projects is one of the major hurdles in creating infrastructure.

According to a survey, of the 190 infrastructure projects facing delays, 70 per cent were delayed due to land acquisition problems. Forty projects by NHAI, 60 being implemented by Indian Railways and 28 power projects are facing difficulties in acquiring land. SLUs would expedite the time taken.

"Of the total land to be acquired for 5,200 km of roads being built under Phase II, only 10 per cent of the land has not been acquired and we plan to do it by the end of this fiscal," said a senior NHAI official.

The SLUs are coming up all over the country -- 10 in Rajasthan, 13 in Bihar, 25 in Uttar Pradesh, 7 in Gujarat, 11 in Orissa, 13 in West Bengal, 4 in Jharkhand, 11 in Maharashtra and 5 in Assam. Around 40 are already operational in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and sanction has been received for Goa.

These units will be headed by an additional district magistrate or sub-divisional magistrate who will report to the NHAI through project directors (NHAI officials put to look after the development of the project). The ADM or SDM would be state government officials, on deputation to the authority.

Opening regional offices is taking forward the decentralistion of the highways authority, which had its only office in Delhi. The process would also include lot of new hiring at the NHAI. Road Transport Minister Kamal Nath has also asked the NHAI to create its own cadre. NHAI has 800-odd regular employees, including 400 officers, and 95 per cent of the staff are on deputation.

The regional offices will come up in Lucknow, Patna, Jammu, Chennai, Guwahati, Delhi, Nagpur, Bangalore and Kolkata. These offices will be headed by a chief general manager. Many CGMs have been assigned their regional offices and asked to join.

Meanwhile, Nath said in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday: "We will build this year more roads than the total length completed by the (1999-2004) National Democratic Alliance government in its five-year term." The minister also sought the cooperation of state chief ministers to help in speedy land acquisition and informed the house that SLUs have been set up to expedite the process and provide just and fair compensation.

As on June 30, the government is implementing 202 highway projects with a total project cost of Rs 72,768.9 crore (Rs 727.68 billion) under the National Highways Development Project. In addition, 2,491 national highway projects with a sanctioned cost of Rs 13,847.4 crore (Rs 138.47 billion) are being implemented by state Public Works Departments and the Border Roads Organisation, the Rajya Sabha was informed.