Rs 1,000 crore corpus proposed for making roads green in a year

NEW DELHI: At least Rs 1,000 crore will be spent on making Indian roads green in the next one year under an ambitious policy, government said today.

The Green Highways Policy scheduled to be launched by Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari on September 29 makes it mandatory for road builders to set aside 1 per cent of the total project cost for plantation.

"The government intends to take up road projects worth Rs 1 lakh crore in a year and one per cent of it comes to Rs 1,000 crore which will be spent for plantation of trees along National Highways," Road Transport and Highways Secretary Vijay Chhibber told reporters here.

He said 1 per cent of the project cost will be transfered 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 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.

"There will be an agency to monitor the progress of plantation which will also conduct performance audit. The survival should be 90 per cent after raising the plantation of one year and fee will be released on annuity basis," he said.

The growth of plants will be monitored for five years, he said adding that under the present system it has become a game of numbers by concessionaires with real trees not coming up.

Keen on transforming the NHs network into green corridors to minimise pollution, the ' Green Fund' is the brainchild of Gadkari, who is confident that once kickstarted, the policy will not only create huge number of jobs but also contribute significantly to the economic growth.

Gadkari has specified that planting trees in any particular area will depend on the soil suitability there, besides climate and success stories like Alphanso can be planted in Konkan in Maharashtra.

The Indian road network 33 lakh km is the second largest in the world and consists of about 96,000 kms of NHs, which constitute only 1.7 per cent of the road network but carry about 40 per cent of the total road traffic.