Nitin Gadkari warns Punjab govt of terminating highway projects if law & order situation does not improve

New Delhi: State-owned NHAI will have no other option but to cancel/terminate eight more severely-affected highway projects in Punjab with total length of 293 km costing Rs 14,288 crore, if the law and order situation does not improve, Union minister Nitin Gadkari wrote to Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann.

Gadkari said that he had been informed about two incidents which occurred recently on the Delhi-Katra Expressway projects. "In one incident in Jalandhar district, the engineer of the contractor was brutally assaulted. Although FIR has been registered in this regard, strong action is required to be taken against the perpetrators," Gadkari wrote in his letter dated August 9.

The minister pointed out another incident in Ludhiana district, where the project camp of the contractor of Delhi-Katra Expressway was attacked by miscreants and also engineers were threatened of burning the project camp and their staff alive.

However, FIR has still not been filed and miscreants have not been arrested despite written requests by NHAI officials, he said.

Gadkari said: "If the situation does not improve, NHAI will have no other option but to cancel/terminate 8 other severely affected projects with total length of 293 km costing Rs 14,288 crore. These are mainly greenfield corridors and even cancelling one package will render the entire corridor useless."

He wrote that it is pertinent to note that due to pending issues related to land acquisition and prevailing law and order condition, number of contractors have requested to foreclose contracts and have raised claims against NHAI.

The minister revealed that the NHAI has already terminated three projects, amounting to Rs 3,263 crore, due to land availability challenges.

Referring to the recent review of NH projects on July 15, which he chaired, Gadkari said he was assured that pending issues related to land acquisition and law and order would be resolved on a priority basis.

"However, it has been brought to my notice that no progress has been made in this regard and situation has further worsened," he wrote, expressing his disappointment.

Gadkari urged the state government to immediately take corrective measures, file FIR and take strong actions against the perpetrators in order to prevent such incidents in future and to restore the confidence of NHAI officials and staff of the concessionaires.

The minister also attached photos of assault in his communication to the Punjab CM.

NHAI is developing greenfield and brownfield national highway corridors including Delhi-Katra Expressway in Punjab.