Is Indian government hell-bent in turning elite expressway projects into largely real estate projects?

The saga of gradual refurbishment in Indian real estate sector has invigorated the Union Government of India too and on account of that it is busy in conceiving of a new notion. What is this new design? The government is looking at enabling real estate developers to commercially make the most of land as part of its plans to build an expressway network around the country to add to national highways.

Is the plan feasible? Well, the government is also taking a look at the feasibility and with this end in view, Road transport and Highways Secretary Brahm Dutt had held a meeting with real estate developers in October to examine the feasibility of enabling land development to cross subsidize the cost of building the expressways. It has been found that the cabinet committee on economic affairs, or CCEA, has, until now, approved the construction of 1,000km of expressways at an estimated cost of Rs16,680 crore. These expressways would be access-controlled, six- to eight-lane roads connecting Vadodara-Mumbai, Bangalore-Chennai, Delhi-Meerut and Kolkata-Dhanbad.

On the word of Road transport and Highways Secretary, given the high costs of building the expressways, “real estate along expressways should be fully exploited”. He added that the government was looking at quite a lot of models of land development. However, it is worthwhile to mention, in one go that the National Highway Authority of India, or NHAI, at present does not allow the commercial exploitation of land along highways.

If we care to refer to chronicles, it will be found that private concessionaires of highway stretches get their revenue solely through tolls. Nevertheless, a number of states for instance Uttar Pradesh have formerly bid out expressways based on the quantum of land.

Roads secretary Dutt said the Planning Commission was working on draft expressway legislation. But analysts fail to conform to this approach of the government and expressing differences states, through doing the same, the government runs the risk of the projects turning from being elite expressway projects into primarily real estate projects.