New norms for designating state roads as NH to be out soon

NEW DELHI: Conversion of state roads into national highways on political considerations won’t be the norm any more and many of such newly declared NHs may lose that tag, if they don't satisfy the new criteria. The norms for any road to get the NH tag would include at least 5,000 vehicle flow daily and its direct connectivity to an existing NH.

TOI has learnt that multiple rounds of inter-ministerial consultations have been held since September to finalise the new norms, which could be out by this month-end. Sources said one of the criteria for assigning the NH tag to any road would also be based on the density of NHs in a particular state.

At present, the road transport ministry decides the NH tag for any road after it receives a request from a state government and there are no set norms for this. In the past four-and-a-half years, highways ministry under Nitin Gadkari has added 38,000 km to the NH network to expand the total length to 1.29 lakh km. Another 54,000 km have got in-principle approval.

According to sources, a committee of secretaries will be set up to identify roads to be designated as NH after which administrative approval would come from the transport ministry.

While making the new norms applicable to future NHs is being seen as a good move, any proposal to strike off already notified stretches from the list could prove to be tricky in an election year, sources said. “Striking off stretches with in-principle approval from the list will not be a problem since no investment has been made by the Centre. But de-notifying any of the already declared NHs because they won’t qualify as per the new norms may end up becoming a political issue,” the source said.

The sole authority of road transport ministry to notify any road as NH has been one of the reasons of all ministers in-charge being more popular among the MPs.