The Centre plans to set aside at least Rs1,000 crore for making Indian roads green in the next one year under an ambitious Green Highways Policy.
The Green Highways Policy scheduled to be launched by Minister for Road, Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari on September 29 makes it mandatory for road developers to set aside one per cent of the total project cost for tree plantation all along the highways.
“The Government intends to take up road projects worth Rs1 lakh crore in a year and one per cent of it comes to Rs1,000 crore which will be spent for plantation of trees along National Highways,” said Vijay Chhibber, Secretary, MoRTH.
He said one per cent of the project cost will be transferred to a green corpus which will be utilised anywhere across the country and local community, self help groups, and registered NGOs would be empanelled for it.
“We don’t want to go with the same contractors,” he said, adding there would be a separate set of contractors, who would be empanelled for such projects on meeting the criteria fixed by the Government.
“The Government has authorised Indian Highways Management Company limited (IHMCl), a company promoted by NHAI for empanelling of plantation agencies and only empanelled agencies will be allowed to bid for planting work on the National Highways,” he said.
He said plantation scheme has been classified under various categories including tree plantation along the highways turfing with grass and shrub and planting on median based on study of local flora and vegetative cover.