Nath for separate authority for building expressways

Fearing resistance from state governments over land acquisition for commercial exploitation, the union government has put on hold its plan to create a separate authority for building expressways.

However, road minister Kamal Nath, has been pushing for setting up the new body on the lines of National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) on an urgent basis and hopes to convince states in another six months.

''Land acquisition is a major part of any kind of infrastructure project. It is going to be another six months. States will have to decide on the alignment of roads because the states have a larger road map,'' Nath said on the sidelines of a conference entitled 'India -US: An Agenda for Co-Creation', jointly organised by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and US India Business Council (USIBC).

Under the plan the construction of a 15,600km of national expressway network spread over three phases by 2022 has been envisaged as also building of 7,000 km roads annually. The NHAI has been assigned the task of building 20 km of road.

Nath favours a different treatment for expressways from highways, saying "expressways should be looked at separately.''

His ministry had proposed a revenue generation model for funding construction of expressways under which, commercial establishments would come up on the sides of the high-speed roads which would pay fees to the new authority.