Road projects proposed for connectivity face hurdles in Solan

Tedious procedures involved in seeking forest clearance and the absence of gifted private land have become major hurdles for connecting villages having a population of 250 through the Pradhan Mantri Gramin Sarak Yojna (PMGSY)-4. The Public Works Department (PWD) has identified nine rural roads in Solan district that lack proper connectivity and are slated to be constructed using Central funds.

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They require the acquisition of private land or forest clearance. Since encumbrance free land is a pre-requisite for seeking various clearances, road projects are facing inordinate delays. As per the state government’s policy, no private land can be acquired for the construction of roads and it has to be gifted by the land owners. In several cases, roads have to be carved through private as well as forest land, making the process even more stringent.

“While moving a case for seeking forest clearance for such a road, officials have to provide a copy of the gift deed of the private land, failing which the case is not processed for clearance under the Forest Conservation Act,” said Gurminder Rana, Executive Engineer, PWD, Kasauli division.

He said since private land was highly valued in the Kasauli division, land owners were reluctant to extend gift deeds to the government, thus creating hurdles and delaying completion of several roads. Roads identified for PMGSY-4 in the district comprise 4.5-km-long Jakhroda-Katli, 7.5-km stretch of Nabhon-Sogi, 6-km-long Khopar-Sari, 2-km long Runan-Ghoron, 4-km-long Lagdaghat-Sun, 2.7-km-long Jabli-Ghae, 3-km of Kohari-Chowhara and 5.2-km-long Baler-Kunhar. A 3-km stretch of the DDL-Chaura road has also been identified to be funded under the said scheme.

Inhabitants of these villages were eagerly awaiting the construction of concrete roads. Solan Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) Hitender Gupta said forest clearance took three to four months if the requisite documents were provided online and observations were addressed in a timely manner.

He, however, said cases were delayed where the block development officers failed to address the queries or provide requisite documents in a timely manner. He said the process had been simplified as once the user agency uploaded the file on the ‘Parivesh 2.0’ portal, it was sent to the DFO, who inspected the site and then recommended the case to the nodal officer in the state government who sent it to the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change for clearance.