Tamil Nadu govt to bring out new Highways Act

The Tamil Nadu government is planning to bring out a new Highways Act so as to utilise the land effectively for project development across the state.

The State highway department’s policy note, which was submitted by highways and minor ports' minister Edappadi K Palaniswami, stated that it has become increasingly difficult to compulsorily acquire land for widening roads as well as forming bypasses.

Land owners are reluctant to part with their lands, which is leading to delays in execution of projects. To ensure that they are co-opted as partners in the development process, it is proposed to try out the land pooling system as announced in the Budget speech.

“Through this scheme, the land is pooled and road grids can be neatly formed,” the minister said.

This model has proved to be very successful in some parts of the world and other states in India. The Highways Act is proposed to be modified giving effect to land-pooling.

The land-pooling technique will be utilised for the development of infrastructure as well as economic development. This, in-turn, enables redistribution of the remaining plots back to the land owners to develop or to sell.

“This technique will avoid huge land acquisition costs and will also be beneficial to the land owner though he loses some land (undeveloped or under developed), and gets back 70-80  per cent of the developed land. To achieve the above, facilitation through the TN Highways Act is being proposed,” he said in the policy note.

The state government said that for the development of national highway projects, 7,874 hectare of land was required, of which 3,202 hectare had already been acquired.

CMDA prepares study
The Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) has prepared a study -- Chennai City Comprehensive Traffic and Transportation Study (CTTS) -- which envisages an outlay of Rs 14,070 crore for the development of the Chennai metro Area. The report identified 340 projects in the area to be develop in three phases starting from 2010 to 2026.