Drive to Queen of Hills hits a dead end as NGT order brings work on Parwanoo-Shimla highway to standstill

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Scheduled to be completed in March 2018, the work primarily involves hill cutting, road widening, felling of trees and removal of axed trees, besides designing new road alignments. Rough estimates reveal that a month’s delay tends to push the targets two to three months away. The NHAI has already lost six months ever since the NGT passed the first order in May 2016.

An immediate fall-out is that M/S G R Infrastructure Ltd, a Rajasthan-based leading infrastructure company engaged for the four-lane construction, has served two withdrawal notices to the NHAI. The company has also sought permission to de-mobilise its machinery claiming its incurring a daily loss of Rs 25 to 30 lakh due to the idle workforce is too high to bear.

The company is left with no option, says Pankaj Aggarwal, its director. “We want to execute the project. After all, it’s also about the company’s reputation. We are impressing upon the NHAI to take up the issue with NGT and also resolve other pending issues. We have set our own deadline of completing the project much before the official deadline of March 2018,” says Aggarwal.

The company’s salary bill for its 400-strong workforce and machinery/equipment is around

Rs 3 crore per month. After the stay, the company has already de-moblised 20 to 25 per cent of its workforce. The rest are only handling minor works, including repair and strengthening of the road cuttings. However, it has not yet decided to withdraw the machinery in the hope that the NGT would relax its order and allow the project to proceed soon.

On the ground also, against the target of completing 30 per cent of the work by December 2016, only 10 per cent has been undertaken till now since September 2015, when the work started on Parwanoo-Solan stretch of the 91-km National Highway. The entire project, estimated to cost Rs 2,828 crore, was split in three parts to cut down delay by engaging three different contractors.

“We saw a rare pro-activism in the state. The Solan district administration granted all necessary clearances, completed the land acquisition and paid compensation to the affected families very promptly and without hassles. But now, we are finding ourselves in a Catch-22 situation. which was never anticipated for the project of such a scale and economic importance for Himachal Pradesh,” says Col R S Puri, NHAI’s regional officer in-charge of Himachal projects.

The NGT action has also cast a shadow on two other stretches of the project, Solan-Kaithlighat (23 km) and Kaithlighat-Dhalli (29 km). Not many global bidders/contractors have shown interest as these stretches would also involve felling of trees.

The four-lane project, as per its Detailed Project Report, involved felling of 21,000 trees, of which 12,805 have already been felled after necessary sanctions from the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF). Only trees left to be felled include 2,500 on private land, 5,200 on government land and 800 standing on the land belonging to defence department, mainly at Dagshai Army cantonment.

What seems to have alarmed the NGT was a huge cover of standing trees along Parwanoo-Solan stretch at Dharampur, Jabli and Kumarhatti being axed and its possible cumulative adverse impact on the mountain ecology. It was also keen to know whether the project implementation authority has made provision for compensatory afforestation, replantation and protection of trees to compensate damage caused to the environment.

Reply submitted to the NGT reveals the NHAI has paid Rs 18 crore for compensatory afforestation. More than 1.44 lakh trees have been planted in Solan district and areas close to the National Highway though state’s forest department, the official agency for the afforestation job. The felling of trees was done over 65.4 hectares of land while the areas covered under the compensatory afforestation is around 131 hectares. All felled trees have already been removed to the HP Forest Corporation depots. Yet, in October 2016, the NGT came out with fresh orders, asking the NHAI to first explore the possibilities of transplantation of trees yet to be felled. The trees awaiting felling include those standing on the private land. The NHAI has approached the forest department and HP State Forest Corporation again to seek advice and is also studying possibilities of transplantation. This will take time.

State’s Additional Chief Secretary (PWD) Narinder Chauhan says the NGT order has created a serious problem. “NHAI has paid the full cost of trees, deposited Net Present Value (NPV), paid for cost of compensatory afforestation and ensured compliance of all MoEF conditions. There is no reason for the NGT to stop the work. The project doesn’t involve any illegality or violation of environmental/forest laws. We are taking legal opinion to move the High Court for relief. The government has learnt that the Punjab and Haryana High Court and some other HCs have granted relief in similar cases. We cannot sit idle and wait indefinitely for stay to be vacated,” he says.

The environmentalists, however, say felling of trees at such a large scale will have adverse impact on the ecology and climate in Himachal Pradesh. They say it could rather have been wiser to construct a new two-lane road as an alternative, keeping the existing Parwanoo-Shimla NH in its present form. A little bit of widening work could have served the purpose, without mass tree felling.

One such alternative road, says BS Balhans, an INTACH activist and environmental conservationist, could have been towards Kasuali-Sabathu to Jutogh and maybe another parallel road on the opposite side from Chakki Mor etc. “The forest department’s claims to have done compensatory afforestation in lieu of trees felled are always bogus. There is an issue of survival of such plantations, which is never more than 10 to 12 per cent,” he says.

Accidents on the rise

The four-lane project would have helped smooth traffic on the Parwanoo-Shimla road, one of the busiest National Highways connecting a popular hill station and tourist destination. Around 14,000 vehicles, including of defence (bound for Kinnaur bordering Tibet region), use the road daily, especially during peak tourist season. Lots of commercial vehicles engaged in goods transport also ply on this road day and night. The number has been increasing every year, resulting in traffic congestion and jams.

There has also been a rise in the number of road accidents. Just in the past 10 months between January 2016 to October 2016, nearly 110 accidents have taken place in which 23 people have lost their lives and 19 others seriously injured. Sixty others sustained injuries and six vehicles were totally damaged as per police records, which also show that the maximum number of accidents took place between Parwanoo and Dharampur, where the four-lane work was being carried on.

Inspector General of Police (South) Zahoor H Zaidi concedes that due to the project work (now stopped), commuters were facing hardships and accidents were on the rise. The Solan district police have to post at least 50 personnel only on traffic duty and clearing the vehicular jams during the peak tourist days and transportation of apples. “The travel time on the road has increased because of unworthiness of the road. It’s no longer a pleasant experience to drive on this NH anyways,” he says.

Sometime back, the PWD was asked to explore the possibility of making three alternative link roads to reduce traffic load on Parwanoo-Solan. These roads included Parwanoo-Kasauli-Dharampur, Parwanoo-Bhojnagar via Banasar and Chakki Mor-Bhojnagar-Kumarhatti. PWD engineers at Solan say these roads will be opened to traffic by May-June as these currently require some widening work, construction of retaining walls at some places and strengthening work. Tenders have been floated for this.

Solan DC Rakesh Kanwar, who has been instrumental in speedy land acquisition for the four-laning of the NH, says the NHAI had shown good progress on the project. The contractor firm too had mobilised a lot of machinery and deployed sufficient manpower taking up the work at a fast speed. “We took extra measures to facilitate movement of the trucks during the apple season. Winter tourists season (snow time) will certainly be not without serious traffic problems and vehicular rush,” Kanwar says.

The drive in the fast lane

There is also hope that the four-laning project will make Shimla and Solan hubs for tourism and business, respectively. “Besides cutting down the travel time, it will also facilitate a high-speed mobility, improved riding quality and reduced traffic congestion. Since Shimla’s airport has remained un-operational for the past five years, the four-lane road will be very beneficial for travel from the Mohali international airport,” says Anil Kapil, MD, HP State Infrastructure Board.

The proposed road, which starts from Parwanoo near Timber Trail, will terminate at Dhalli in Shimla. It will have four rail overhead bridges and five to six tunnels, besides three flyways. Currently, the existing National Highway passes from eight settlements of Parwanoo, Dharampur, Kumarhatti, Solan, Kandaghat, Waknaghat, Shoghi and Taradevi to Shimla. Out of these, Kandaghat, Shoghi and Shimla will be bypassed under the four-lane project.

Col R S Puri says the project will have around a dozen big and small bridges, including at Koti, Barog bypass, Chambaghat and Kaithlighat. A 1.4-km-long tunnel will be built at Kaithlighat. Another tunnel at Kumarhatti near Barog bypass will be only for downward traffic from Shimla to Parwanoo while for upward movement, the NHAI will use the existing bypass road that was being upgraded.

Two railway overbridges at Sanawar and Barog Bypass and a flyover at Kumarhatti will reduce the distance by three kms. The biggest bridge (two-km-long) will be on Kaithlighat-Dhalli stretch. About 21-km-long service roads will also be built at Dharampur and Solan while a toll barrier would be erected at Sanawar, he said. The alignment for the third phase from Kaithali Ghat to Dhalli would be totally new and will not touch the existing highway at all. Link roads would be provided for the convenience of people to move to the old highway.