Letters: Building a road regulator

This refers to Vinayak Chatterjee's column "Highway premia revisited" (Infratalk, November 14). While highlighting the reasons to provide support to road developers, the author has cited reasons for stress in executing premium payment-based projects. The fact remains that irrational bidding by road developers was a key failure on their part. They later used the camouflage of environmental clearances to back out. When the central government, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and road developers were fully aware of past experiences why were World Bank studies not considered in framing the bid documents between NHAI and developers?

We support the need for a permanent regulator for this sector rather than committees. It is important that a road regulator has a wider definition and mandate to cover road transport and highways. The larger issues of road safety, quality and performance of vehicles, and free flow of traffic have been relegated to a section of officialdom in the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and State Transport and Traffic Department without any accountability. The road regulator, in this case, has to be responsible for the entire road transport and highways rather than just limiting it to highways.

S P Singh New Delhi

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