Road transport & highways minister Kamal Nath on Friday directed the states to work efficiently on road and highway projects. He warned that states might lose the projects in case of non-compliance. This has come in the light of the minister aiming to construct 35,000 km of highways in the next five years.
?If states do not perform on land acquisition, we will be forced to withdraw the projects. Future projects will be based on the basis of efficiency in land acquisition,? Nath told reporters after his meeting with state PWD ministers and the Transport Development Council. Around 150 highway projects are facing cost overruns, mainly due to delays in land acquisition.
Nath?s ministry recently made it mandatory for states to sign support agreements with it to access central funds for projects. Such agreements need states to acquire land for the projects. Nath said if states fail to sign the agreement, they would not be awarded build, operate and transfer projects.
Some of the states that are yet to sign are Bihar, Gujarat, Jammu & Kashmir, Kerala, Maharashtra, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
Earlier, central funds were released to states without any conditions, leaving it to private developers to acquire lands, which resulted in inordinate delays and huge cost overruns. Nath also asked the states to utilise the funds properly, saying that states? failure in doing so has restricted his ministry approaching the finance ministry and the Planning Commission for more funds. He said states that have not formed committees headed by chief secretaries to monitor the progress of projects have to constitute those at the earliest.
On issuing the national permit to truck operators, Nath said he has referred the contentious matters of fixing the composite fee for such a license and finalising the formula for its division between states to an inter-ministerial group headed by road transport and highways secretary Brahm Dutt. The group has been given three-month time to complete the task. ?We have decided that the national permit scheme will be in place and there will be a composite fee which will be shared between states. A ministerial group has been set up to decide on how the composite fee will be shared,? he said.