New Delhi: The idea of pothole-free national highways by the year end, might sound like an improbability to many Indians, but the Union road transport and highways ministry has set a December target for its officials to ensure that national highways (NHs) are rid of all such craters.
Further, officials who fail to meet the target for their assigned stretches, will have to shell out hefty fines.
Speaking to reporters Thursday, road transport and highways secretary Anurag Jain said that following a meeting chaired by road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari on 4 September, instructions were issued, where accountability of project director (PD) and regional officers (ROs) for maintenance of national highways was fixed.
“We have fixed the responsibility of PDs to take a round of the highway stretch under his jurisdiction every 15 days. Each PD has 200 km to 300 km of highway stretch under him. If there are potholes, it would be his responsibility to ensure that they are repaired,” Jain said.
He added: “The idea is to make the person on the field responsible. This will ensure accountability.”
According to road ministry figures, potholes have resulted in 22,000 deaths since 2013.
According to the ministry’s Road Accidents In India 2021 report (the latest year for which figures are available), of the 1.53 lakh deaths in road accidents in the country that year, 1,481 deaths were caused by accidents resulting from potholes. There were 3,625 such accidents that year, which additionally injured 3,103 people.
The Motor Vehicle Act of 1988 has a provision of fine of up to Rs 2 lakh for accidents caused by poorly-maintained roads or faulty designing. But the provision is rarely invoked against an official or a highway building agency so far, primarily because of lack of accountability, ministry officials told ThePrint.
Also read: Railways’ massive Dedicated Freight Corridor nears completion 2 decades later — why it’s a big deal
Maintaining highways
According to Jain, there are three agencies responsible for ensuring maintenance of highways — the National Highways Authority of India, National Highways & Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited and the state Public Works Department.
“The challenge is to get it done through state PWDs. In state PWDs, posts are lying vacant. It gets difficult to ensure that maintenance is carried out timely,” he claimed.
The Union ministry has now come up with two kinds of contracts to ensure the maintenance of national highways — performance-based maintenance contracts and short-term contracts.
Of the total national highways length of approximately 1,45,000 km, 1,05,000 km is maintained through some contract, while for the remaining 40,000 km there is no contract, Jain said.
“So we have made two kinds of arrangements [for this 40,000 km]. We have gone for a performance-based maintenance contract for five years on government-funded roads where the defect liability period is over, but the highways still have 10-15 years’ life. In highways that need repair in one-two years, we have gone for a short-term maintenance contract,” Jain said.
He added: “We have mapped the entire stretch of such highways [40,000 km stretch] and are ensuring that they come under one or the other contract,” Jain added.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
Also read: Eye on ‘quality’, road ministry to shift to PPP mode for construction, cut back govt-funded projects