New Delhi: The Road Transport and Highways Ministry has taken a slew of steps, including making projects of Rs 50,000 crore ready for award, clearing Rs 1.5 lakh crore projects and setting a target to build 30 km of roads a day, for turning around the sector, Minister Nitin Gadkari said.
Drafting new Motor Vehicles Bill is another important step taken, he added. Also on the anvil is formation of NHAI-International to bid and construct roads overseas. Setting up a National Highways & Infrastructure Development Company, primarily dedicated for implementing highways projects along borders is also on the card.
"In two years time, the road transport and highways sector will undergo revolutionary changes. Transport and shipping sectors will contribute at least 2 per cent increase in the country's GDP in two years span," Gadkari said addressing the media here on completion of 100 days by the new government.
Listing out achievements of his Ministry, he said the draft of the new Motor Vehicles Bill was ready for stakeholders comments and it would be his endeavour to introduce the same in the next Parliament session.
It has been designed and framed in sync with the best practices of six advanced nations and would reduce drastically road accidents in the country, which accounted for 5 lakh accidents and 1.5 lakh related deaths annually, he said. On road projects, Gadkari said: "We inherited a legacy where 189 projects worth Rs 1.5 lakh crore were stuck on account of regulatory hurdles including environment and forest clearances, most of which have been removed and are rolled out."
Also issues pertaining to 24 of the 42 projects on public-private partnership (PPP) mode were removed. In addition, golden handshake with developers were made in 34 projects worth Rs 38,573 crore as the builders had backed out and "we will bid out these on EPC (engineering, procurement and construction), he said.
Gadkari said that he was chairing the Infrastructure Group, appointed by the Prime Minister and most of the issues involving delays in forest and environment clearances, defence and railway objects have been removed, with Environment and Forest Minister Prakash Javadekar recently clearing 33 of 54 stuck projects.
Also, 350 projects concerning rail over bridges stuck for over two years can now be online tracked, he said, adding, "to avoid delays in projects, the government, henceforth, would not award any project without acquiring 80 per cent of the required land."
"The Ministry has reached out to state governments seeking their support, besides MPs in ten states have been told about delays in projects in their concerned constituencies," he said. He said that work was under way on projects worth Rs 28,000 crore in Jammu & Kashmir and Rs 10,141 crore in North East besides seven road packages worth Rs 12,500 crore have been cleared for work on new highway alignment in the Uttarakhand to make its roads away from rivers.
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