“The CCI was informed today that some of the bottlenecks identified by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) for the fast-track implementation of National Highways Development Project (NHDP) have now been removed as a result of the efforts made by the Ministry,” an official statement said after the meeting.

Some unresolved issues fall in the domain of other ministries, it said, adding that a high level committee under the chairmanship of Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan, Member, Planning Commission, has been constituted to suggest an amicable solution to these.

The statement said the issues resolved include grant of “Special Exemption or No Objection Certificate under Forest Rights Act, 2006” for strengthening and widening of National Highways projects, specifically pertaining to diversion of protected forest land under the Forest Conservation Act, 1980.

Other major issues resolved include “de-linking the grant of environment clearance from forest clearance for linear projects” and “treating the strengthening and widening of national highways infrastructure projects differently from the new projects and allowing construction of national highways in non-forest areas, as expenditure does not become infructuous in such projects.”

The CCI gave nod to enhance the ceiling of 4,000 km of four laning in NHDP Phase-IV to 8,000 km on Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) (Toll) mode only, based on the traffic justification according to the Indian Road Congress (IRC) code and guidelines.
The statement said: “The waterfall mechanism recommended by the B K Chaturvedi Committee for determining the execution mode of the road projects that is BOT (Toll) followed by BOT (Annuity) and then Engineering Procurement and Construction (EPC) to be delegated to the ministry to decide in cases where the Passenger Car Unit (PCU) falls between 5,000 and 10,000.”

It added that 4,000 km of road projects were permitted to be taken up for upgradation on EPC basis in 2012-13 and in case of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) projects, it has been decided that the debts due to the lenders will be considered as “secured” loan. The government said the users of National Highways throughout the country will be benefited due to infrastructure development.

This will also help uplift the socio-economic condition, increase connectivity with far flung areas leading to higher economic activity and will also increase employment potential for local labourers for project activities, it added.

The Supreme Court in March had allowed delinking of environment clearance from forest approval. As many as 20 road projects worth Rs 27,000 crore were stuck long for want of environment clearances.

With the CCI nod for delinking forest and environment clearance a road project can start work once it gets environment approval. Earlier, the forest clearance was mandatory before start of the work on roads stretches falling in forest and non-forest areas. The highways sector has been battling problems like equity crunch, delays in clearances and land acquisition besides major players abandoning projects mid-way.