Major procedural amendments, including exemption from environment clearances, for roads projects are being proposed to the Cabinet Committee on Investment to achieve the UPA government's commitment

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and the State Forest Department are at loggerheads over plans to cut down trees so that the Bijapur-Gulbarga-Humnabad National Highway 218 can be widened.

Contradicting the NHAI’s claims that the loss of several trees will not adversely affect the environment, the State Forest Department said that cutting down the trees will have a disastrous impact on the flora and fauna of the region.

New Delhi: National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) expects to build at least 2,800-2,900 km highways under the NH Development Programme during 2012-13, which will be the highest ever completion in the authority’s history. The maximum NH construction record so far has been 2,693 km in 2009-10, sources said.

According to officials, the highways minister C P Joshi has asked the authority to achieve its internal target of 3,000 km by March-end and to expedite construction on small pending stretches so that large corridors can be brought under “completion” category. “Issues relating to every under construction stretch was discussed on Tuesday and Wednesday at the highest level where top NHAI and highway ministry officials were present,” said a source.

The woes of investors in highway projects don't seem to end. The new guidelines issued by the environment ministry, allowing work on non-forest land while clearance for projects involving diversion of forest land is pending, are cumbersome and would not facilitate investments, developers feel.

According to official sources, the developers have written to the environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan, roads minister CP Joshi, NHAI Chairman RP Singh and the department of economic affairs in finance ministry, stating that the condition that in order to begin work in non-forest land, the user agency must explicitly provide for a “technically feasible alternative alignment” for segments that fall in forest land is too difficult to be complied with.

More than 3 months after they were completed, a cluster of mobile toilets, that is bound to bring immense relief to commuters waiting at the Peerkankaranai bus terminus, is yet to be made operational.

Elected representatives and town panchayat staff maintain that all the civil works as well as procedural formalities of handing over work orders for maintaining the toilets have been completed and are unable to state the reasons for the delay.

The National Highways Authority of India has asked the environment ministry to clear 25 road projects that are stuck for want of approvals.

The 266-km project is estimated to cost Rs. 20,000 crore

Haryana, Punjab, Delhi and the Centre have agreed to construct an access-controlled Delhi-Ludhiana Expressway at an estimated cost of Rs. 20,000 crore.

Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda’s proposal to revise the Delhi-Chandigarh Expressway to one connecting the national Capital with Ludhiana was ratified by Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal and Delhi Public Works Department Minister Raj Kumar Chauhan at a meeting chaired by Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways C.P. Joshi.

“They suffer from inherent financial weaknesses”

Taking a tough stand, the Union government on Thursday said GMR Infra and GVK Power and Infrastructure Limited, which had served notices on the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) stating that they were withdrawing from two major highway projects owing to delays in environment clearances, suffered from inherent financial weaknesses.

Delhi-Ludhiana expressway talks begin, states express in-principle approval

With the Prime Minister’s Office stepping in to resolve the row between the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) over forest clearances to highway projects, the former has communicated the ball is now in the latter’s court. Senior officials in the NHAI and the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways said the highway authority maintained its stand and had communicated this to the MoEF and the PMO.

Stepping in to resolve the row between the National Highways Authority of India and the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) over forest clearance to linear projects, the Prime Minister’s Office Tuesday worked out a formula to end the embarrassing stand-off between two arms of the central government.

A meeting called by the PMO decided the MoEF will submit a clarification delinking environmental clearance from forest clearance for linear projects following which NHAI will withdraw its court case against the ministry, highly placed sources said.