The already delayed restructuring of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has now landed in a controversy. The Ministry of Shipping, Road Transport and Highways and the NHAI are yet to approve recruitments for 26 senior-level posts in the authority even after several rounds of meetings on the issue.In fact, the NHAI’s high-powered board has deferred a decision on it three times since last year. Now, a Lok Sabha MP has written to Minister of Shipping, Road Transport and Highways T R Baalu alleging that ‘vested interests, favouritism and corruption’ are holding back the appointments to some of these posts.The MP has alleged that some senior officials in the NHAI are indulging in extortion of contractors and still further ‘blocking’ some important posts in the organisation through manipulation. The MP has asked the minister to initiate an inquiry against an official in the NHAI’s administration department and also shot off a complaint to the CBI and the Delhi Police. In his letter, the MP has pointed out how the eligibility criteria for posts like chief general manager (CGM) for land acquisition, finance, administration and human resources has been tweaked around to suit the ‘vested interest’ of some officials who are said to be close to the minister’s office.Case in point, the eligibility criteria for CGM land acquisition and human resources requires just any degree from a recognised university, and in case of officials on deputation applying for the post of CGM human resources by promotion, they strangely call for candidates holding the post of GM administration/environment/ land acquisition besides human resources. Such anomalies, allegedly inserted in eligibility criteria, has been used to manipulate the whole recruitment method for the senior-level posts in NHAI.Baalu has assured the MP that he will have the “alleged favoritism and corruption” looked into. Officials, meanwhile, say that the restructuring will “soon” be done and the “process is on”.The recasting of NHAI has been a long pending idea with the Prime Minister having called for it in January 2005 to enable the authority to take independent decisions for executing highway projects. The idea was to build the institutional capacity of the NHAI by making it a multidisciplinary professional body with a high-quality financing management and contract management expertise. The Cabinet had last year approved the restructuring of the NHAI and said that it should include the selection of a chairman by a search committee for a fixed tenure of at least three years, increase in the number of part time/full time members in the NHAI, creation of 26 posts of chief general managers and empowering the authority to engage experts from outside.The need for restructuring the NHAI was felt more so in view of the massive National Highways Development Programme (NHDP) that is to be implemented. A shortage of technical manpower vis-à-vis the requirements of the NHDP, which now stretches across the country and will expand further through its seven phases, means an increase in the magnitude of the NHAI’s work and hence the need for restructuring.The NHAI continues to show a dismal performance with most of its projects delayed, massive shortfalls in target achievement and loss of revenue with large sections still going untolled. A review of the NHAI’s progress on decisions taken by the Committee of Infrastructure (CoI) was carried out last week by the Planning Commission and it has shown that on the NHDP-I, there has been just 49 per cent achievement in terms of four laning targets for 2007-08. On the tolling target, 55 per cent achievement has been recorded. While NHDP-I — stretching across 7,498 km, scheduled for completion after several revised deadlines in December 2007 — continues to drag on, the NHDP II — across 6,647 km — has fared even worse.
