Mohali’s Greenfield project set to open to public within a week
Mohali deputy commissioner Komal Mittal said on Tuesday that the agitation near Banjeri village toll plaza was lifted today. “The National Highways authorities are now giving final touches to the project, and the road will be opened for the public in a week,” she said.
The much-delayed Greenfield project is now set to open to the public within a week, with authorities confirming that landowners have called off their protest near Banjeri village toll plaza, which had stalled the opening of the project.
Mohali deputy commissioner Komal Mittal said on Tuesday that the agitation near Banjeri village toll plaza was lifted today. “The National Highways authorities are now giving final touches to the project, and the road will be opened for the public in a week,” she said.
The Greenfield Project, designed to decongest Airport Road and offer an alternative corridor for Delhi-bound traffic heading towards Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir, was scheduled to open on December 1, but landowners and farmer union members had been protesting for over a week, demanding an entry and exit road near the toll plaza. The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) maintained that constructing such a facility was not feasible, resulting in a fresh deadlock and delay. The project had already missed its June and September deadlines earlier this year. There is one toll plaza on the project, for which the toll amount is to be fixed.
The project was earlier scheduled to open on December 1, but landowners and farmer union members had been protesting for over a week, demanding an entry and exit road near the toll plaza. The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) maintained that constructing such a facility was not feasible, resulting in a fresh deadlock and delay. Despite multiple rounds of discussions led by the duty magistrate, officials were unable to reach an agreement until now.
Mittal said, “The NHAI is doing surveys and working out the feasibility of entry and exit points, although the entire slip road is not possible.”
The 31-km Greenfield stretch, being developed under the Centre’s Bharatmala Pariyojana, connects IT Chowk (PR-7) near Chandigarh International Airport to the Kurali–Chandigarh Road. The road runs along the outskirts of Mohali and is being constructed by a Maharashtra-based company awarded the contract in October 2022. The NHAI conceptualised the project after scrapping the 40-km Kharar–Banur–Tepla Road Project in July 2019 due to high projected costs. The Greenfield Project carries an estimated cost of ₹1,400 crore, including ₹700 crore earmarked for land compensation and another ₹700 crore for construction.
This is not the first time the project has faced resistance. Work had earlier come to a halt in 2021 for nearly eight months after landowners objected to compensation rates. While initial compensation ranged from ₹24 lakh to ₹4.18 crore per acre, the NHAI later increased it to between ₹1 crore and ₹1.09 crore per acre in certain cases, paving the way for resumption of work.
