Need to improve quality of road construction and maintenance: Roads Secretary

There is an urgent need to address the poor quality of highway construction and maintenance in the country according to Roads Secretary, Giridhar Aramane. Addressing the National Conference on Technology and Road Operation, Aramane said that he has recently ordered inquiry into the construction of the Shamlaji to Mota-Chiloda section of NH-8 in Gujarat. He also mentioned about the poor condition of roads in Himachal Pradesh where accidents tend to reoccur.

“The way road has been constructed is giving way to so many problems…similar is the story throughout the country,” Aramane told the members of Highways Operators Association of India (HOAI). The HOAI is an association of infrastructure investors in India and their asset management companies.

Coming down heavily on developers, Aramane noted that even basic technologies like using bitumen of optimum content are also not being observed.


He said that while poor road quality may not be the norm in India, but the bad ones impact perception greatly.

“Of course, when you are building thousands of kilometres of roads every year, a few kilometres here and there are not the representative sample of a construction technology or quality,” he said, pointing out that the few bad projects affect the global image of Indian roads.

"Even in parliament, the largest number of questions during any session are about quality of road construction and maintenance work," he added.

Taking a hard position against poor quality control in highway building, he said, “Most of the people, even the biggest in the construction industry are making to do with very sloppy quality control. Now we are vexed, in the government, with this kind of attitude. So we are trying to punish by penalising the contractors, developers, and engineers who certify these projects.”

Warning about the way ahead, Aramane said, “You will definitely see a very large number of such penalties being imposed in the coming few months. So my request is to make sure that quality is ensured in construction and maintenance of road projects.”