The high-powered Committee of Infrastructure (CoI), chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, wants the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to redesign highway projects to renew the interest of bidders.
The NHAI should avoid high-cost structures and postpone constructing new bridges, while re-designing projects under various phases of the National Highways Development Project (NHDP), according to a presentation by the CoI to the Planning Commission recently.
Displeased that “over-engineering” by the NHAI took a toll on the projects, the committee, sources said, told the NHAI, “Reduce the design period from 20 years to 10/15 years... Build for 10-year traffic projections, provide for augmentation after 10 years”.
A majority of 60 highway projects worth Rs 70,000 crore under various phases of the NHDP failed to attract bidders as they involved investment not commensurate with the expectations of returns, sources said.
“Avoid high-cost structures; e.g. Build six-lane bridges and service lanes when traffic exceeds 60,000 PCUs (passenger car units),” the CoI said.
The CoI directed postponing new bridges until the capacity of the existing bridges is exhausted and wanted converting pedestrian underpasses to foot-overbridge besides building vehicular overpasses on smaller roads.
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Making a case for restructuring the projects to make them viable for the private sector, the CoI said that failure was largely on account of over-engineering and there is a need to bring down the scale of highway projects to make them acceptable to private players.
Taking a tough stand on the NHAI’s failure to attract bidders despite repeated attempts, a Committee of Secretaries (CoS) too has also directed it to restructure projects.
According to sources, on 13 projects the committee said that if these, worth about Rs 8,000 crore, are awarded, they could exhaust the NHAI’s cess revenue of about two years.
About NHDP Phase V projects, the committee said they exceed the ceiling of 10 per cent viability gap funding approved by the Cabinet.
Earlier last year, response came for just 22 projects out of 60, including single bids for seven projects.
When contacted, an NHAI spokesperson said he was not in the know of the developments. However, a key official in the Department of Road Transport and Highways said the process for restructuring was on.