The Madras High Court today asked the Indian Roads Congress to nominate a team to inspect the Chennai-Bangalore National Highway-4 and submit a report to the court.
The first bench, consisting Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M Sathyanarayanan, passed the order on a PIL by one V R S Sampath who contended that the stretch of NH-4 between Chennai and Bangalore was in very bad shape with road works going on at 45 places.
"We would like to have the benefit of an independent agency's report in this matter. Thus, we direct the Indian Roads Congress to nominate a team of experts to carry out inspection of the roads referred to in the PIL and submit a report to this court", the bench said and posted the matter to October seven for further hearing.
The bench said that the cost of the inspection would be borne by National Highways Authority of India (NHAI)
Sampath contended that "for the past six months, NHAI is constructing bridges and carrying out repair works at 45 places on the stretch and the road is very badly maintained, though toll is collected at 10 places".
"Because of uneven surface, movement of vehicles is affected, vehicles get damaged and accidents and delays are caused, increasing the travel time," Sampath maintained.
He said toll was being collected only for the purpose of providing clean and quality roads for road-users and added that unless A-class facilities were made available to road- users, NHAI or its concessionaires could not collect toll.
Sampath said he had already written to the authorities to stop collecting tolls but the concessionaire had not given any details so far.
Pointing out that the claim had been disputed by the NHAI Chairman, the judges said it was not in dispute that the duty of concessionaires was to ensure quality of road and performance was their obligation.
