Appraisal panel delay holds up road projects

NEW DELHI, OCTOBER 9 : While the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is faced with the challenge of awarding a massive 6,273-km-plus length of highways for upgradation in the current financial year, the delay on the part of the Public Private Partnership Project Appraisal Committee (PPPAC) in clearing projects is slowing these down. Road projects extending across some 1,000 km are pending PPPAC approval. The NHAI has only been able to award 321 km of project length in this financial year.

“Over 13 major highway projects are pending with the PPPAC for approval since June or so. The PPPAC has not cleared any projects after June and they only held a review meeting in September. So, various projects are held up and the NHAI cannot even send more projects to the PPPAC for approval till those pending are cleared,” an official in the Ministry of Shipping, Road Transport & Highways said.

Constituted after a Cabinet decision in 2005, the PPPAC is headed by the Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, and has the Secretaries of the Department of Expenditure, the Planning Commission, the Department of Legal Affairs, and the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways on board as members. The body has to approve the NHAI’s projects before the latter can start the bidding process. The PPPAC is also mandated to clear projects within a month.

The projects pending with the PPPAC include the 135-km-long Eastern Peripheral Expressway that is to form a mega ring road cum bypass road system around Delhi for interstate goods traffic. So, while work is already underway on the Western peripheral expressway, the eastern section still pending with PPPAC is running behind time. Several other projects including the Rs 528 crore four laning package along the Muzaffarpur-Hardwar section, aimed at connecting Uttarakhand capital Dehradun to Delhi, Nagpur bypass and other sections in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh are pending PPPAC approval.

“There is undoubtedly a delay but there is little that can be done about it. PPPAC has raised questions about various projects. While the approval criteria for every project was initiated with a good objective, it has ended up adding another layer of approval for projects, which means more delay,” added the official. The 6,273-km national highways targeted to be awarded this fiscal include 2,995-km of six-laning of Golden Quadrilateral under the National Highways Development Programme (NHDP) Phase-V, 2,224 km of NHDP III A and 1,054 km of NHDP...

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