State highways to be denotified in Uttarakhand

The Uttarakhand government today decided to denotify state highways falling in the area of local civic bodies and categorise them as other district roads as highway specifications were coming in the way of their maintenance and expansion.
"Highway specifications are posing practical problems in the maintenance, development and expansion of state highways. Hence those falling in the area of local civic bodies will be denotified as state highways and classified as other district roads," an official release said here today.
The decision was taken at a meeting of the state cabinet here chaired by Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat, it said.

There are 64 state highways in Uttarakhand out of which 63 are located in local civic body areas.
The cabinet also decided to give stamp duty exemption for five years to farmers who take loans after mortgaging their cultivable land.
The reason for denotification of the state highways was population pressure, heavy construction along them, presence of sewer, drainage lines, transformers and electric poles which obstruct their development and extension, the release said.