Road Regulator only after new government takes charge

NEW DELHI: The UPA government's ambitious task of setting up a regulator for the country's road sector will have to wait till the new government assumes power in May as the Law Ministry is yet to finalise its comments on the subject.

"The Ministry of Law and Justice is yet to send its comments on the proposed Road Regulator. Any further action on the proposal will be done by the next government," a source said.

A panel comprising members from the Road Ministry, Finance Ministry, Law Ministry and Planning Commission is vetting the proposal.

Ministry of Road Transport and Highways proposes to set up a Road Regulator which will perform the key functions of tariff setting, regulation of service quality, assessment of concessionaire claims, collection and dissemination of sector information, service-level benchmarks and monitoring compliance of concession agreements, among others.

Finance Minister P Chidambaram, in February 2013, had said that an independent regulatory authority would be constituted during the year to address issues such as financial stress, construction risk and contract management in the sector.

"Law Ministry is contemplating if a serving Supreme Court judge will head the (regulatory) body or a retired one," the source said.

As per the proposal, the authority will be a 3-member body with the option of upgrading it to 7 if needed, the source said.

Currently, National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is responsible for the development, maintenance and management of highways in the country.

The road sector has not been able to make much progress with developers shying away from projects on account of equity constraints and alleged regulatory complexities.

India has one of the largest road networks in the world, with about 3.3 million kilometres of roads, including more than 79,000 kilometres of national highways.