LUCKNOW: In a major setback to the Mayawati Government, a Division Bench of the Allahabad High Court on Friday restrained it from proceeding with the mammoth Ganga Expressway project in Uttar Pradesh.

The Court directed the State Government to obtain prior environmental clearance before proceeding with the construction work on the ambitious road project.

Ecology hazards

The consortium led by GMR Infrastructure Ltd has won the 181 km Hyderabad

Greater Noida: Farmers of 12 villages have decided not to sell their lands at circle rates for the construction of peripheral highway that would pass through Noida. Land of more than two dozen villages are needed for the construction of peripheral highway coming from Delhi and Haryana to Noida.

The farmers took this decision during a mahapanchayat at Amarpur village in Dankore on Sunday.

Mumbai: The widening of National Highway Number 7 (NH-7) - connecting New Delhi to Kanyakumari - has ground to a halt outside the Pench Tiger Reserve amid fears that any widening here will destroy the ecologically rich but fragile forest ecosystem.

The Pench Tiger Reserve, which stretches across Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, is contiguous with the Nagzira Sanctuary, the Navegaon National Park, and the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra, which, combined, create a large green corridor running from southern Madhya Pradesh to eastern Maharashtra.

New Delhi: After a hiatus of a few weeks, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has awarded three road projects worth Rs 4,000 crore. The contract awarding agency for the government signed three concession agreements for 4/6-laning nearly 244 km of highways on build, operate and transfer (BOT) basis today.

CHENNAI: The term

The reported decision by the government to raise the level of viability gap funding, or grants, for projects under the fifth phase of the National Highway Development Programme, may breathe some new life into a scheme that has stuttered to a halt. No project has been awarded in recent months because no one bid for some, while for others there was only a single bid.

Surajeet Das Gupta / New Delhi May 4, 2009, 0:24 IST

The government has decided to raise the viability gap funding (VGF) for certain projects under the fifth phase of the National Highway Development Project (NHDP V), owing to poor response to the first few projects put up for bids in December last year.

THE National Highways Authority of India