It’s going to be a long, costly ride

If 14 years seemed too long a time for you to be still paying toll to ride on the eight-lane Delhi-Gurgaon highway, think again. The period has now been extended to 20 years, thanks to by the NHAI, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Dec 13, 2008, 24:30:42 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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If 14 years seemed too long a time for you to be still paying toll to ride on the eight-lane Delhi-Gurgaon highway, think again. The period has now been extended to 20 years, thanks to by the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI), which did not have a system to compute a reasonable toll collection period.

As per a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG) office tabled in parliament on Friday, “During the extended concession period of six years, the concessionaire would gain Rs 187.77 crore.”

The NHAI also had to invest more in the project because of faults and frequent changes in the detailed project report (DPR) of the highway.

For instance, the NHAI changed the scope of the project between April 2003 and May 2004, leading to an additional cost of Rs 146 crore, equivalent to as much as 21 per cent of the project cost.

CAG said these crucial details should have been foreseen at the time of preparation of the DPR itself. “Moreover, no responsibility was fixed on DPR consultants for their failure to take into account the Indian Road Congress specifications on the minimum vertical higher of 5.5 metre for underpass.”

This is not all. In spot inspections conducted by the CAG, the road, for which you pay Rs 17 per trip, was found to be unsatisfactory in quality in three out of the six sites inspected.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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