National highway links: Only 22 km of flyovers, ring roads built in 7 years

Both these phases were approved to be executed on BOT (toll) mode and at an estimated project cost of nearly Rs 17,000 crore.

Seven years after the government approved construction of 700 km of flyovers, ring roads and bypasses to link national highways, projecting December 2014 as the completion date, only 22 km have materialised on the ground with another 20 under implementation.

The works are a part of National Highways Development Project (NHDP) Phase VII, with NHAI as the executing agency.

The situation is worse for NHDP Phase VI, which mandates construction of 1,000 km of expressways and was approved in 2006, with not even a single kilometre constructed so far. The date of completion for this phase, as was projected back then, was December 2015.

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Both these phases were approved to be executed on BOT (toll) mode and at an estimated project cost of nearly Rs 17,000 crore.

“Regarding NHDP Phase VII, the Cabinet had imposed two conditions on its execution. One, that the corresponding state government had to bear the land acquisition cost, and two, that the project was to be executed under BOT (toll) mode. Currently, very few states have the money to acquire land, and BOT mode is struggling. And we don’t have the money to do all of it on EPC,” roads secretaryVijay Chhibber told The Indian Express a couple of weeks ago. He added that states should provide land if they feel the necessity for such structures in cities.

According to data tabled in Lok Sabha on Thursday by Pon Radhakrishnan, minister of state for road transport and highways, the Centre has received 13 proposals for flyovers in the last three years from Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, Kerala, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, of which 12 have been accepted.

According to officials, the prohibitive cost of land acquisition is more of a problem for expressways, which are to be developed as greenfield (unconstrained) projects as they require more land than in case of expansion of existing highways.

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“Since the new Land Acquisition Act came into force, the cost of acquiring land has shot up almost four to five times. Take the Delhi Jaipur expressway — the acquisition cost on that stretch has shot up from Rs 4,000 crore to Rs 20,000 crore. The government had even contemplated building an elevated expressway, but that is even more expensive,” an official said, adding that both the NHDP phases seemed unviable.

Data tabled in Lok Sabha by the roads minister on Thursday states that the 1,000 km of expressways in NHDP Phase VI are going to be drawn out of seven expressway projects, shown in the accompanying table, which are currently undergoing feasibility studies.