In what may be construed as a veiled warning to the Uttar Pradesh government, the Centre on Tuesday said it would support road projects only in those states, which provide necessary assistance to the national highway expansion programme being carried out by National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). Incidentally, Uttar Pradesh has refused to provide support to NHAI projects.
?No state project can be cleared without our support. There is no way that states would come in the way of state roads. I see no reason why any state should not support our road projects as we also support their projects,? road transport and highways secretary Brahm Dutt said.
As per Dutt, 23 states and union territories have agreed to sign the state support agreement (SSA)?an umbrella agreement between the state and NHAI that promises assistance in land acquisition, maintenance of law and order and not creating roads that may compete with the national highways. However, six states, including Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Gujarat, have not agreed to sign the deal.
While Gujarat has promised necessary support on ?best effort basis?, meaning the state government will do what it can, on April 6 this year, the UP government wrote a letter to the Centre specifically saying that it would not provide any assistance to NHAI.