HP, Haryana given 3 options to resolve land acquisition row

Ambika Sharma

Tribune News Service

Solan, December 3

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has given three options to the governments of Himachal and Haryana to resolve the long-pending issue of higher land acquisition, threatening to denotify the proposed four-laning of the Pinjore-Nalagarh road if they failed to do so.

NHAI officials in a recent meeting held with senior officials of both states communicated their stand on the three options which included either reducing the rate of compensation awarded to land owners or paying the difference in the amount, which was pegged to be higher by the NHAI or face denotification of the project.

The officials claimed that as against the civil construction cost estimated to be Rs 420 crore, the land acquisition cost had been estimated to be Rs 650 crore. The land to be acquired is 54.9 hectares, which includes 26 hectares in Haryana and 28 hectares in Himachal. Since this is an existing road with an average right of way of about 24 m and it is proposed to acquire 45 m for four-laning the road, the amount of Rs 650 crore for laying additional 21 m was considered to be too exorbitant.

The NHAI officials asserted that there was a huge difference between the average sale rates and the circle rates in respect of all 24 villages, except a few cases, and this would unduly perk up the project cost.

With an amount of Rs 124 crore already having been disbursed in Himachal to 1,604 of the 2,200 beneficiaries, the denotification of the project will lead to many complexities.

Though the officials asserted that compensation disbursed for the four-laning of Pinjore-Nalagarh road was exorbitant, there were at least three other highways in the state where compensation disbursed was much higher. This included the Salogra stretch of NH-22, where the cost of acquisition was 1,03,50,000 per bigha, Kasawati-Nasogi highway in Kullu, where the amount was Rs 88,99000 per bigha, Thalla in Mandi, where it was Rs 60,00,000 per bigha as against Rs 58,00,000 per bigha for the Baddi-Sheetalpur stretch of the Pinjore-Nalagarh highway.

A senior official of the Public Works Department said efforts would be made to ensure that the project was not denotified and an appropriate response would be given to the NHAI before the stipulated deadline to resolve the issue.

The project, which was conceived in 2008, is supposed to ease traffic congestion in the industrial hub, where road accidents have become a routine in view of the burgeoning traffic and non-expansion of the roads. All eyes are now on the state government’s reply, which will decide the future of the project.