NHAI to pay for land to plant trees

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has agreed to bear the cost of land acquisition for compensatory forestry alongside the highways in Uttar Pradesh.

As per the agreement reached between the NHAI and the UP government and ratified by the cabinet here today, the authority would pay the cost of land acquisition to the state government for the compensatory forestation.

The NHAI, in the process of executing several road projects in UP under the National Highways Development Programme, has urged the UP government to exempt it from the provisions of the Forest Act, 1980, for preventing the time and cost overrun on the road-widening projects in UP.

The NHAI is executing several projects in the state as part of the Golden Quadrilateral and the East-West Corridor project. The state government has taken the decision following the intervention of the Centre.

Earlier, the state forest department, in its forest clearance order to the NHAI for road-widening projects, had imposed an additional condition of providing a 10-metre-wide strip along the widened highways for compensatory forestation.

This condition had created operational difficulties for the NHAI. The NHAI told the state authorities the land acquisition would take time, and if such conditions were linked with the execution of jobs, projects would get delayed.

The NHAI also said there were concentrated habitations along the highways and so it would be very difficult to acquire the land along the highways for plantation.

It suggested to the state government avenue plantations might be undertaken in the areas in "the right of way" and the shortfall, if any, might be made good elsewhere. The state government had then accepted the proposal.

The state government has relaxed the condition on providing 10-metre-wide strips. However the NHAI would be required to acquire the land later at different places for plantation to compensate the trees cut by it for widening the roads.

The NHAI had also taken up the matter with the Union ministry of forest and environment. The cabinet secretary had convened a meeting of all the parties concerned in Delhi on November 3 last, where the state government agreed to relax the additional condition of 10 meter wide strip imposed by the forest department.

Now as per the revised agreement the land for 10 meter wide strip along side the highways would be acquired by the state government and NHAI would bear the cost.

The major project taken up by the NHAI in UP is the widening of the National Highway-28 between Gorakhpur-Ayodhya-Lucknow. The project is scheduled to be completed by July 2008. NHAI is also implementing widening of the Meerut-Muzaffarnagar highway and NH-3 between Agra-Gwalior.

As part of the East-West corridor, the NHAI has completed the four-laning of NH 25 between Lucknow and Kanpur.

The NHAI is also executing 10 projects of 756 km on NH-2 between Agra and Varanasi. This project is part of the 1,453-km-long Delhi-Kolkata National Highway.