The honourable minister for road transport and highways had made a statement sometime ago comparing the “achievements” of the UPA and NDA governments on the National Highway Development Project (NHDP), including the Golden Quadrilateral (GQ). He claimed that the UPA was constructing 4.48 kms a day against the NDA’s 1.86 kms.

Since it was a political statement made for publicity purposes, it was felt that it would be best to ignore it. But when the finance minister makes the same claim in Lok Sabha, in his written Budget speech, it deserves to be taken note of.

And so I did.

I wrote to the finance minister, requesting him to send me the data on basis of which the claims were made. In response, I got a letter from the minister for Road Transport & Highways (RT&H) containing the data. It is relying entirely on that data, I’m making my comments.

The basis for UPA government’s statistical calculations was:

• The NDA government “approved” the NHDP on December 12, 2000. So for them, the “construction” time started on December 12, 2000, and was over on May 21, 2004 (1257 days).

• For the UPA, the time started on 22 May 2004— the day they formed the government and calculations have been made till 31 January 2006 (620 days)

This method of calculation—the simple mathematics of total length of highway constructed and the total number of days—is so frivolous, it would be amusing if it were not amazing.

Even a person with very little knowledge of road construction, or for that matter any big construction project, would know that there is a huge time lag between the project approval and the beginning of the project execution.

... contd.