Government is currently saddled with 600 hectares of land acquired for building highways, now lying idle as projects have become unviable, officials say.
Project approvals will now go through more rigorous scrutiny to ensure cost & time overruns are minimal. By 2023, with nearly 80% of tenders awarded, cost of Bharatmala Phase-I doubled.
Move comes after meeting chaired by Nitin Gadkari this month. Project directors & regional officers to be held accountable for the maintenance of the national highway stretch assigned to them.
Presence of Huawei cellular towers near US missile base in Wyoming has led FBI to start digging into land purchases going back to the Obama administration.
Govt constitutes team of experts to inspect two sites of massive landslides in Himachal Pradesh. Team recommends determining effect of human activities on highways among other measures.
The govt is auctioning national highway assets under two models — Toll Operate Transfer and Infrastructure Investment Funds — to monetise them. The 104 NHs span 26,700 km.
Highways ministry built 13,298 km in 2020-21, up from 10,237 km in 2019-20. However, road construction has not crossed Gadkari's 2017 target of 40 km/day.
16 vendors left Mussoorie following a hate crime in the wake of the Pahalgam terror attack. Police asked all of them to go back to Kashmir for 'their safety'.
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