Minister of road transport and highways Nitin Gadkari on Tuesday said he believed that foreign collaborations with a majority stake should be made mandatory for preparing detailed project reports (DPRs) for highway and tunnelling projects to improve their quality. 

“This will at least improve the quality of the reports and the projects,” he said at a FICCI conference — ‘Tunneling India’.

The minister had on several occasions raised concerns about the quality of project reports for highways and people who prepare them. At the event, he also talked of tightening the technical and financial qualification criteria.

He said the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) relaxing the criteria in its projects has strengthened competition, leading to a 40% reduction in costs. The costs have come down so much that larger companies are staying out as they are not able to compete.

He said the time has come to raise the criteria again by a few notches so that the quality does not suffer. “Technical and financial qualifications should be liberal but not liberal enough that the quality suffers,” Gadkari said.

In a lighter vein, Gadkari said that in some construction projects, European companies even choose Indian partners who own caterer services or beauty parlours.

Gadkari said that currently the work is at different stages on Rs 2.5 lakh crore worth of tunnel projects and this can be doubled as there is no dearth of funds, but as a country “we should be booking for cost-effective solutions”.

He said the government has completed 35 tunnels of 49-km length and the work on 69 tunnels of 134 km is in progress. 

Gadkari also proposed taking up tunnelling projects jointly with the railways to save costs.