Thambidurai magic: Highways from nowhere

If the new national highways recently announced by Surface Transport Minister M Thambidurai are actually constructed, states of Tamil Nadu and Bihar will have national highways defying all laid-down norms.

As a spinoff, Thambidurai’s constituency — Karur — will have a broad-gauge railway line to Salem, the foundation stone of which was laid by Railway Minister Nitish Kumar yesterday. Three other railway bridges have been thrown in as a bonus. The estimated cost: Rs 15 crore.

In return, Thambidurai has declared a stretch of road from Fatuha to Barh (Nitish Kumar’s constituency) a national highway, contravening the criteria.

Both, Thambidurai and Nitish Kumar were not availablefor comments despite several attempts.

The general laid-down criteria for declaring a road as a national highway is that it should either connect two or more states or centres of economic importance or industrial towns or even major ports or tourist spots.

Neither does the stretch in Bihar — Fatuha-Chandi-Harnaut-Saksora-Barh — nor the one in Tamil Nadu — Dindigul-Palani-Pollachi-Coimbatore — fulfills even a single criterion.

The Surface Transport Ministry officials, used to fobbing off requests for declaring some stretch or the other as national highway, could not fight this one as the orders came directly from their Minister. “Our engineers tried to argue it out with the Minister that these two stretches in particular could not be declared as national highways and they that would stick out like sore thumbs. But he had made up his mind,” said an official.

The Minister had recently announced that roads, measuring up to 11,068 km, would be upgraded as National Highways, their construction andmaintenance thus becoming the responsibility of the Central Government. According to estimates of the Surface Transport Ministry, the construction of the entire 11,068 km will cost around Rs 7,770 crore with Rs 220 crore every year for their upkeep.

Thambidurai has been kind not only to his constituency, Karur, but the entire Tamil Nadu as well. Of the 11,068 km, maximum length of 1,200 km is in Tamil Nadu including the one from Karur to Coimbatore, 1,047 km in Uttar Pradesh and 980 km in Rajasthan. Other states have also got some share of the national highways.

The story is not very different in the Ministry of Railways. Officials say that there were at least four other projects — one in Srinagar, two in Uttar Pradesh and another one in Hyderabad — which needed priority handling. The broadening of rail tracks in Rajasthan was still not complete. And the officials were taken by surprise when Nitish Kumar decided to accord more importance to the Karur-Salem broad-gauge rail line.