According to a Deutsche Bank report, during April-August, the plan expenditure of the Centre was up 23 per cent compared with the year-ago period, primarily driven by the spending on rural roads.

“Growth in planned expenditure will be driven by the ministry of roads (rural roads) as well as by spending on irrigation and water under the social expenditure schemes, which suggests pre-election demand,” the report said.

According to the report, in August, on year-on-year basis, cement demand grew 6-8 per cent and coal supplies to power plants rose 17 per cent, driving power generation volume growth of 15 per cent.

“Within planned expenditure the jump is high in rural spends, suggesting pre-election demand. However, the spurt in housing credit, along with a good spend in overall infra suggests that there is all-round growth. We may expect recovery on rising government expenditure,” it said.

“We believe a big surge in planned government expenditure may be a key reason behind this. Although there is a feeling that going forward this may be curtailed to reduce the fiscal deficit, it is still debatable how much this could come down in a pre-election year,” the bank observed.

The road was laid by Britishers in the 19th century to connect with Tibet for trade through Shipki.
The chief minister was addressing a public meeting at Reckong Peo in tribal Kinnaur district.

He also said that all possible help was given to the flood-hit Kinnaur.

“The state government has provided all possible assistance to restore normalcy in rain ravaged Kinnaur district, which suffered huge losses due to heavy rains and floods during the monsoon season,” Mr Singh said.

He said that the government has ensured that there was no shortage of funds for the relief and restoration of vehicular traffic and the roads were restored.

The Chief Minister also said that the government will provide suitable land to rehabilitate the families who have lost their houses in the natural calamity.

He announced to provide Rs. 40 lakh for construction of a stadium at Pooh, and said that a survey would be conducted for laying the sewerage system in Pooh.

MUMBAI: Accepting suggestions on how to improve the state of Mumbai’s roads, the Bombay High Court on Friday said there was a consensus that contracts for construction, repairs and maintenance of roads must be awarded on the basis of competence and qualification of a contractor and not merely to the lowest bidder.

The court said heavy penalty must be imposed for delays in projects and firms who do defective work must be blacklisted.

The Delhi-Gurgaon toll road project is getting further tangled in controversies. The Highways Ministry is considering whether a criminal liability case can be made on the project.

This is what emerges in a letter sent by Highway Ministry Secretary Vijay Chhibber to NHAI Chairman R.P. Singh on Thursday.

Simultaneously, the Haryana Government has backed off from its earlier stated intention of buying out the project to make it toll free and ease the pain for commuters facing jams on the toll road. With this, National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) will have to buy-back the concession agreement, at the earliest, the Secretary said.

On Wednesday, NHAI Chairman had written to Highway Secretary to decide how the project could be handed over to Haryana State Government.

A day later, on Thursday, the Road Secretary wrote back to NHAI that in a meeting between Highways Minister and Haryana Chief Minister – held in the presence of Highway Secretary, NHAI Chairman and Haryana Chief Secretary – it was “patently clear that the Government of Haryana is not pursuing its earlier intention of buying out that project”.

Given the importance of the issue and the prevailing uncertainty, the Ministry will also seek assistance from Attorney General to represent NHAI in pursuing this matter in Delhi High Court. This project is already under dispute due to the multiple issues and hearings are going in Delhi High Court.

Due to the toll road developer not meeting his commitments on road maintenance and commuters facing a lot of inconvenience, NHAI had decided to terminate the project.

But, the project lenders – currently led by IDFC – have given more money to the developer than the project cost agreed upon by the Government. So, if the contract is cancelled, they will get less money from the NHAI. Now, the lenders do not want NHAI to cancel the project as they have to chase the road developer – DSC Ltd – for the repayment, who is already financially stressed.

Indications are that the issue has been referred to Chief Vigilance Commissioner and the Enforcement Directorate to pursue whether the road developer had used inter-corporate deposit route to transfer funds from the escrow account, where toll money received from project were kept.

Source-http://www.thehindubusinessline.com