Explainer: Mewat celebrates as 'Khooni' Highway to finally get much needed expansion

After a long wait spanning a decade, Nuh’s long-pending demand has been granted. The Haryana Government has announced the much-awaited expansion of the Nuh Alwar highway stretch at a cost of Rs 400 crores. The expansion project was announced in the recently concluded Vidhan Sabha session, which has left the Meo-dominated district celebrating.

Why is the expansion being celebrated in the state?

The 47-km highway in question connects Haryana’s backwaters Nuh with Alwar on National Highway 248A and lies in the Meo-dominated Mewat region. It has claimed maximum number of lives in the past one decade and the demand to expand the same was being raised since 2017. The villagers and local institutions have adopted all possible protest techniques to get an expansion sanctioned but nothing happened.

Why is the stretch called Khooni Highway?

Officially it is Highway 248 A, but popularly it is called the Khooni Highway as many lives have been lost on the stretch over the years. According to police records, in the past five years 1,100 persons have lost their lives on the stretch between Nuh and Alwar in more than 1,600 accidents. The term Khooni Highway was first coined after a report revealed that 2,500 persons had died on the stretch since 2007 to 2017.

What has been the impact on vicinity villages?

It’s a known fact that every second home in at least 32 villages has lost a member to an accident on the stretch making it a common road of gloom. Many women victims have been mowed down while going to fields, the men who are primarily commercial drivers die in collisions, all thanks to the narrow stretch and rampant wrong-side driving or parking. The highway is a hub of overloaded dumpers and canters and on an average, one to two accidents are reported daily on the stretch. Not just the villages falling in Haryana, but even the bordering Rajasthan, too, have been facing the brunt.

What has been the path of struggle for villagers so far?

The villagers have over the years, under successive governments, staged protests, held marches, done signature campaigns but to no avail. They have pleaded politicians, made human chains, performed street plays, held village panchayat meetings, signature drives and memorial services, to draw the attention to the rising death toll on the single-lane highway. In addition to social organisations such as the Mewat RTI Manch and the Mewat Sanyukt Sangarsh Samiti, the local political leaders, irrespective of party affiliations, have been fighting for it since years. The issue has been included in Vidhan Sabha questions of local MLAs for the past 10 years. In 2019, the locals had sent a 100-ft cloth with over 20,000 signatures to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, pressing the urgency of road expansion. An initial allocation of ?186 crore was announced, but the project was delayed due to the construction of the Delhi-Mumbai-Vadodara Expressway, which diverted the attention from NH-248A.

What is the progress on the issue now?

The issue was taken up in the Vidhan Sabha this year and is being dubbed as Eid gift for Mewat. Haryana’s Public Works and Public Health Engineering Minister Ranbir Gangwa approved a ?400 crore budget for widening the stretch into a four-lane corridor. The move is expected to significantly improve road safety and connectivity in the region, which has for years, battled poor infrastructure and rising road fatalities. According to officials, tenders and construction work will begin in coming months. In addition to technical and administrative approval, a detailed budget allocation plan has been shared with the local Nuh administration.