Trying to resolve highways issue with Uttar Pradesh: Kamal Nath

The Centre today underplayed the row with Uttar Pradesh over construction of highways, saying there was no conflict of interest and the differences are only procedural in nature and would be resolved soon.

"There are procedural issues which we are resolving. Our secretary had gone there (Lucknow)," transport minister Kamal Nath told PTI when asked about the state government taking up the cudgels against the road and highways ministry for creating a parallel network of national highways that would impact UP's toll collections.

As a mark of protest, the Mayawati government in UP declined to sign a pact with the Centre called 'Umbrella State Support Agreement' under which the state is supposed to help acquire land to facilitate central road projects.

The UP government had recently raised issues of "conflict of interests" before the Planning Commission, saying a parallel national highway would wean away traffic from state highways.

Countering the allegation of conflict of interest between the Centre and the state government, Nath said that there was no such conflict, as the economy was growing fast and faster road addition, either nationally or locally, would augur well.

Overall production (passenger vehicles, commercial vehicles, two wheelers and three wheelers) increased from 10.85 million vehicles in 2007-08 to 11.17 million vehicles in 2008-09.

Across all categories, total sale of vehicles increased to 1,114,157 units in January 2010, against 768,698 units in the January 2009, according to industry body SIAM.

"I don't think so (that there is a conflict of interest)... with the 33% growth in the automobile sector there is not going to be any constraint on any of the highways," Nath said suggesting that a non-issue should not be seen as a controversy.

As such, in India, about 65% of freight and 80% of passenger traffic is carried by the roads.

"What happened is some of the national highways we gave them (UP Govt) to build. Then we said we will build ourselves," Nath said.

The minister was responding to queries on the Uttar Pradesh government taking up the issue of parallel highways with prime minister Manmohan Singh, amid reports that he asked the road ministry to resolve the matter with the state.

UP is among the five states which have not signed the Umbrella Agreement with the states and the federal dispute of this kind could hamper the ambitious growth target set by Nath of rolling down national highways at a rate of 20km a day. The Mayawati government has awarded contracts for some of the expressways, including 165km Yamuna Expressway linking Agra to Noida.
    
"Whether it is expressway or any other highway, we have huge capacity requirement," Nath said.

The road transport ministry has plans to build 35,000km of highways at a cost Rs2,80,000 crore during the second term
of the UPA government.

At present, India has a national highway network of 70,500km (or 2% of total road network) against 1,31,899km of state highways.