CHANDIGARH, OCTOBER 23 Calling it a travesty of jus tice” that the National High-ways Authority of India (NHAI) constituted specifi cally for developing and man-aging national highways functions without its own inspection, verification or compensation machinery, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has called for for mulating “efficient and effec The direction came as Jus-tive operational guidelines”. tice Harkesh Мапцја expressed concern handicap of the court” aris ing frum the deficiencies with in the NHAI.
The Bench also directed placing the order before NHAI Chair-man for perusal and action.
It observed that the NHAI was a statutory body under the provisions of the National Highways Authority of India Act. Yet, it “did not even pos sess its own official machinery to either inspect or verify the land sought to be acquired for the purpose of laying down of national highways, to enter for survey thereof, to hear objec tions submitted by the inters ested person in the said land or even to take possession there of or to determine the amount
of compensation against it.”
” But the NHAI was for all practical purposes depend-ent upon the “barrowed or hired officers” either on deputation from the ministry concerned or from the state machinery. They were usually “neither expert in the field of revenue or finance, are primarily from line Winds were by officers borbut ed from the state machinery in the form of competent authority-cum-SDM, they were not under the NHAI’s administrative control.
Satinder Duggal
