Haryana Chief Minister Manohar lal Khattar took the Western Expressway Corridor route to expose the lies of his predecessor Bhupinder Singh Hooda Government. On Friday, the State dropped a bombshell in the Supreme Court with its claim that not a single kilometre of the 135-kilometre Kundli-Manesar-Palwal stretch was complete. The State-run Haryana State Industrial Development Corporation (HSIDC) in-charge of the project had all along maintained that 68 per cent of the project was over.
While the Haryana Government informed the court they were scouting for a new concessionaire to meet the 2016 deadline set by the SC, the bench headed by Chief Justice Hl Dattu directed the State to squeeze the tender deadlines to ensure the project to commence again in three months.
Surprised by the disclosure made by the Haryana Government, the bench, also comprising Justices Arun Mishra and Adarsh Goel, said, “You have made a wonderful statement…We see today
that nothing was being done. Where were your engineersIJ”
Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar, who appeared for HSIDC, informed the court, “In the 135-kilometre, 68 per cent was said to be complete. But in reality, nothing has been done as not a single kilometre is completely ready.”
The Solicitor General said that after the formation of the new Government in October 2014, the matter was reconsidered on account of huge contractual and financial implication. “We are not interested in paying Rs1,300 crore as Settlement/Termination payment to the old concessionaire. This amount was fixed earlier with approval of the State,” the SG said.
However, the Bench said, “Merely because there is a change of Government you cannot be running away. After all they (project concessionaire) have invested money.”
The old concessionaire, represented by senior advocate Kapil Sibal, informed the Court that the matter was pending before an arbitral tribunal. Sibal also gave instance of another material alteration of reducing the expressway from the proposed six-lane to four-lane. The Court left all questions open to the tribunal even as it made it clear to the Solicitor General to award contract in two months and commence work a month thereafter.
Referring to a timeline earlier presented by Haryana on February 15, 2014, counsel ADN Rao, who represented the Court-appointed Environmental Pollution and Control Authority (EPCA), said, “the new concessionaire had to begin work on August 1, 2014. The timeline has kept extending from 2005 to 2008 to 2012 to 2014 and now 2016. We only want the project to be complete.” Even the bench felt that at the pace suggested by the State, the project may not complete in two decades.
The Court directed Haryana to brace up to complete project by 2016, fixing two months to conclude contract and work to commence after one month. “On no ground we will extend time,” the bench said.
The Court had directed construction of the Western Corridor and an Eastern Corridor connecting UP and Haryana on February 11, 2005. The corridors were meant to decongest Delhi from the load of heavy moving trucks and inter-State containers which transited Delhi for lack of any alternate route connecting Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.