India’s highway construction touches 15km a day

NEW DELHI: Construction and expansion of national highways has touched 15 km a day during 2012-13, registering an increase of over 4 km per day. Though the figure is much less than the government's commitment to construct 20 km per day, it has come as a relief to the highways ministry and National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) in light of very few projects on public-private-partnership (PPP) being bagged by highway developers, a media report said.

Increase in highway construction and expansion - about 5,800 km -- comes before Planning Commission member B K Chaturvedi holds a review meeting of this sector. Sources said both NHAI and agencies undertaking projects under the ministry have improved their performance. While last year the highways authority had constructed only 2,248 km, this year it is close to 2,800 km. "Since there was huge slowdown on the bidding of projects we had focused on construction and there was strict monitoring of progress," an NHAI official told TOI.

NHAI undertakes only those road projects which fall under the NH Development Project (NHDP). On the other hand, the highways ministry takes up all non-NHDP works including road development in north-east region and left wing extremist (LWE) regions. Even state Public Works Departments (PWDs) undertake highways expansion and construction works on behalf of the ministry.

Officials said the ministry's agencies have also improved their performance. They added that the final figure to be available by Monday evening would be close to 3,000 km. A senior functionary claimed that in LWE areas, the construction is close to 1,300 km. Similarly, road construction in north-east region has also increased significantly.

Meanwhile, learning from this experience of how regular and strict monitoring can push road construction, the ministry will soon set up video-conferencing facility connecting all its regional offices to the headquarters. It has invited tenders for this operation. "We are trying to use IT for better monitoring and tracking of works and our man power," a ministry official said.

Even to promote issues relating to road safety, minister C P Joshi had recently interacted live with over a dozen of road users from across the country answering to their queries and taking on their suggestions, the report further stated.