Vajpayee’s highway project turns bumpy

NEW DELHI, MARCH 20: Call it coincidence if you will, but as soon as Jaswant Singh stopped heading the Task Force on Infrastructure, the ...

NEW DELHI, MARCH 20: Call it coincidence if you will, but as soon as Jaswant Singh stopped heading the Task Force on Infrastructure, the opposition to the Prime Minister’s ambitious cross-country highway has begun to crystallise.

At the Task Force’s last meeting, on March 11, Surface Transport Minister Thambidurai emerged as a major opponent of the highway. It appears that while Jaswant was seen as quite intimidating and someone who did not encourage dissent, the members of the task force find the new head, K C Pant, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, more approachable.At the last meeting, Thambidurai found a willing ally in Civil Aviation Minister Ananth Kumar, and both demanded a “more rational approach in infrastructure development.”

Thambidurai told The Indian Express that he disagreed with the approach of converting most existing road routes into access-control highways with toll-bridges. He argued that if this were done, there would be no alternate route for traditional users, in casethey did not wish to use the toll highway. The principle of alternative routes, he argued, is an integral part of any toll highway/expressway project.

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Thambidurai said the development of national highways and 7,000 km of cross-country corridors — from Kashmir to Kanya Kumari and from Silchar to Saurashtra — seemed next to impossible in the given scenario.

“To encourage investment of the private sector, we have to give them certain guarantees and security of revenue. This can only come from tolls which the people are not willing to pay. People in the country are not used to paying for the roads,” the Minister said.