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.

The minister, RT&H, has ignored this. According to his own ministry’s norms, it takes 25 months to start work after approval has been given.

In fact, some of the norms laid down by the ministry of RT&H are as follows:

• Identification of specific projects & engagement of consultant for project preparation: 9 months

• Feasibility study, detailed Project preparation: 12 months

• Land acquisition: 12 months

• Pre-qualification of contractors, bids, award of works: 7 months

• Engagement of supervision consultant: 5 months

The total is 45 months. By “dovetailing” various activities, the time-lag accepted is 25 months.

The UPA government has very conveniently ignored the time and effort required for the preparatory work.

When the UPA government took over on 22 May, 2004, a number of projects were in the final stages of completion. In case of three projects, as much as 98.5 per cent and for twelve others, over 90 per cent was complete. Are these to be credited to the UPA account?

In view of the above, the figures produced by minister for RT&H and the “claims” make interesting reading.

Points to be noted: As per the monthly break-up provided by the minister of RT&H, in the very first month after its takeover—June 2004— the UPA claims to have completed work on 186 kms. the Going by its its own mathematics, the government could have claimed a completion rate of 6.2 kms per day (186 divided by 30).

In November 2004 alone, the UPA government claims to have completed 909 kms. Thus in 2004, the overall length of highways completed was 2097.4 kms, the break-up being:

• In last 5 months of the NDA government: 438.4 kms

• In the first 7 months (June-Dec 2004) of UPA: 1659 kms

What is the contribution of the UPA for “completion” of 1,659 kms of highways? It can at best, take credit for supervising an on-going work. But is it not extremely improper to pull-down the NDA government’s work on such manipulated data?

Let me give the factual position on the ground as on 31 May 2004—this data is based on the UPA government’s 53rd monthly report on NHDP projects as on 31 May 2004. The progress of construction was this when the NDA vacated office.

• The UPA has claimed that they completed 2,777 kms in 620 days (upto 31 January, 2006), which works out to 4.48 kms a day

• Out of this 2,777 kms, 1926.0151 km was already completed by NDA government upto 60-90% and about 160 kms more than 95%.

• Do the UPA government—the prime minister and the finance minister—think that these figures (UPA’s 4.48 km/day and NDA’s 1.86 km/day) is a legitimate claim or is it misusing data and bluffing the people to run down the NDA government?

As for the comparison of the two governments’ performance on the speed of construction of 4-lane highways, let us compare the “comparables”.

The NDA government had conceptualized NHDPI, II and III; planned and executed or commenced execution—except (84 Kms), of NHDPI, planned and completed some stretches of NHDP II and completed bulk of all planning activities of NHDP III.

I would like to ask government what new road projects they planned since 22 May, 2004 and what exactly is the status of each of these, particularly in regard to identification of specific projects, stretches; approval of the cabinet; financial planning; preparation of detailed project reports (DPRs); acquisition of land; time schedule for each of these projects.

This is enough to gauge what the NDA government did in about three years and what the UPA government has done on the road infrastructure front in two years.

The UPA government’s contribution so far has been to put NDA’s programme (NHDP) in cold-storage and to keep on postponing the targets.

In the very first Project (NHDP-I), GQ—the most prestigious project—the UPA’s record in land acquisition is that even after two years, as on 1 January 2006, over 33% of land required in Tamil Nadu and 20% in Maharashtra has still not been acquired.

The minister for RT&H has publicised, and so has the prime minister, that 132 contracts have been awarded by UPA for 5053 kms in 1257 days—more than any government in past.

Can two of these projects be started in the foreseeable future?

How many have any land acquired at all? How many have even 50% land? Is the prime minister aware of the pathetic state of land acquisition for the NHDP II? Does he know that 48% of land shown as “acquired” pertains to only issue of notification and not acquisition? Why award contracts when the contractor cannot start work? The result this will have is cost-escalation through contractors’ claims and massive time and cost over-run.

Besides, the state of affairs of the 4-6 lanes highways construction—even of the ongoing projects—is well-known.

Today, MPs, cutting across party lines, have been complaining about the slowing down of the on-going projects. The government ought to concentrate on these aspects, instead of making tall claims. The government and the PM have been announcing new road projects costing about Rs 2,00,000 crore for over a year now. But no specific details have been worked out. As for the implementation, the government is still at the “examination” stage. It has probably moved from “analysis” to “paralysis”.

The reason why work was going on at a fast pace during NDA’s tenure was that apart from the sincerity of purpose on speedily implementation of NHDP, it took many initiatives to speed up work. A few of these were:

• Proper constitution of and delegation of authority to NHAI Board

• Regular and intimate interaction among the MORTH, NHAI, consultants & builders for fixing sub-targets and problem-solving. The MORTH took active responsibility to resolve problems like land acquisition, environment clearance, financial problems by interacting with Planning Commission, Finance Ministry, state chief ministers and others.

• Exempted customs duty on the import of the state-of-art equipment

• Time for construction of individual projects was reduced from 4 years to three-and-a-half years for World Bank funded projects and from 3 years to two-and-a-half years for our own funded projects.

• Bonus for early completion and penalty for delay. During 2003 and upto May 2004, 13 projects were completed 1 to 6 months before time.

I strongly request the UPA government to shed the inferiority complex and build on the foundation laid by the NDA government for speedy development of highways. We, in the NDA, did make mistakes. But we made efforts to learn as we went along, with course-corrections off and on, and built on our experiences. The total set-up MORTH, NHAI Board, consultants, contractors, were producing results. The UPA government could have made use of these and earned laurels for itself by doing even better than what we in the NDA did. That would have been a meaningful governance and a great service to the nation.

The author is a former Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways