The Prime Minister’s Project Monitoring Group has facilitated clearances of 155 projects, which entail an investment of around Rs 5.5 lakh crore, of which one-third are road and port building projects.
“We are trying to digitise all the processes by March 15 this year. Industry can file applications in digitise version for forest clearances. The vision is that starting with forest today, environment and mines clearance can also be digitally tracked by September 1 and November 1 respectively and hopefully by the last quarter of the financial year coal related digital clearance,” said Anil Swarup, Chairman, Project Monitoring Group (PMG). He was speaking at PHD Chamber Summit on Highways
“Steps are on to digitise and expedite all the process by March, 2015 as the Government wants transparency and effciency in all works,” he said.
Meanwhile, Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari who also addressed the summit said that stalled highways projects worth Rs 1,80,000 crore will be rolled out in a month’s span after ironing out hurdles like delays in land acquisition and green nods.
Blaming the previous regime for award of projects “without acquiring even 10 per cent of the required land they doled out projects,” said Gadkari.
“Close to 189 projects worth Rs 1,80,000 crore are stuck due to problems in land acquisition, delays in forest and environment clearances, non-transfer of defence land and hurdles in rail overbridges. Hurdles will be removed by August 15 and work will start on these,” he said.
Gadkari, also announced that steps were on to launch new projects worth Rs 2 lakh crore soon.
“DPR (detailed project report) will be ready soon for projects worth Rs 2 lakh crore after which steps would be taken for forest and environment clearance and land acquisiton...After two years roads and port sector will help India’s GDP to grow at least by 2 per cent,” he said.
In a significant shift of policy, he also said that public private partnership (PPP) model was not feasible at present for award of road projects due to a host of issues “created by the previous Government” and that schemes will be bid out on engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) mode.
A Committee for such projects has been constituted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi under his chairmanship to fast track the road projects, he said.
Road sector alone accounts for Rs 2,40,000 crore NPAs by banks besides Rs 3,60,000 crore NPAs by power sector, he said adding he would soon be holding meetings with bank officials in this regard. After clearing the backlog, Road Ministry will aspire to build 30 km of roads a day, he said.