SC notice to Centre on a PIL seeking mandatory common utility duct in road construction plans

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 17

The Supreme Court on Wednesday issued notice to the Centre on a PIL seeking mandatory provision for construction of a common utility duct in the construction plan of National Highways and roads to avoid re-digging for large infrastructure projects.

A Bench headed by Chief Justice of India SA Bobde asked the Centre, National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) and others to respond in four weeks to the PIL filed by one Haripriya Patel from Odisha.

Patel said she was bringing to the court’s notice the failure of the relevant authorities to mandatorily provide for common utility duct or corridors along the highways in the construction plan of large infrastructure projects.

She said recommendations for such facilities have been made by various expert bodies and specific provision for such facilities has been made in Guidelines dated November 22, 2016 issued by Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH), and National Digital Communications Policy 2018.

She also sought directions for implementing the MoRTH guidelines and National Digital Communications Policy 2018 which contemplated common utility ducts along with the corresponding regulations.

“It is submitted that the aforesaid proposal of common utility ducts along the roadways have been under consideration by various government bodies since 2002 and various government policies and guidelines also propose the same; however, the said proposal is yet to be approved due to lack of coordination between different government ministries/ departments and thus, the said proposal is stuck in bureaucratic bottleneck for the last 20 years approximately,” the PIL stated.

It said the economic ramification of such delay or inaction of the Centre, NHAI and other parties concerned to implement such state-of-the-art policy is incomprehensible, especially, in view of the fact total budget allocation for roadways has gone up from Rs 83,015 crore last fiscal to Rs 91,832.20 crore for the Financial Year 2020-21.

Non-compliance with the provisions causes unnecessary expenditure on subsequent execution of the same work by public utility services such as telecom companies and other agencies, she submitted.

“It will lead to better utilization of capital expenditure on infrastructure and boost the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Infrastructure of our country,” the PIL contended.