New Delhi: In a curious white paper issued by the ministry of road transport and highways, the National Highway Authority (NHAI) has accused the previous government for stonewalling infrastructure development. In a scathing attack, the white paper accused the previous government of indulging in “number game” in awarding contracts while other ministries put roadblocks in their execution.
The white paper, a copy of which is with this newspaper, says that “undue importance was given to award of projects without considering project preparedness. Pressure was brought to bear on NHAI to award projects even when the land was not acquired to the required extent, and environment and forest clearance was not in place. Awards became a number game.”
The white paper was released after Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought reports on what went wrong in recent years from the key infrastructure ministries.
The white paper has accused almost all key ministries, including defence, railways, environment and even the inter-ministerial group (IMG) constituted by the Union Cabinet under former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, for not only trespassing into the autonomy of the NHAI, but also in ensuring that road constructions could not take off in a real sense.
“The tendency to work in silos and alacrity to dominate over and preserve their individual turf, even when it goes against national interest, is not limited to ministry of environment and forests (MoEF). The ministry of railways has been extremely tardy when it comes to ROB/RUB (road over bridge and road under bridge) clearances, as 90 clearances are yet to come and some are pending for as long as three years. The defence ministry had delayed transfer of defence land in many cases, with clearances pending for seven years,” the white paper has lamented.
It has also accused the Union Cabinet under the previous government for having diverted the resources to the tune of Rs 3,321 crores to the Consolidated Fund of India and not given it by going with the B.K. Chaturvedi recommendations. “The government has gone back on its promise and till 2013-14, the backlog of amounts not ploughed back to NHAI has risen to Rs 3321.17 crores,” the white paper has claimed.
Coming hard on the ministry of environment, the white paper accuses it of not giving clearances to projects which had “no stretch of forest at all”.
In its prescription to cure the ills, the white paper advises “ministries and departments whose clearances are critical for orderly execution of road projects should shed their dogmatic approach and be made accountable for their actions. No one should be permitted to work in silos.”
