Finally, residents living along the city stretch of the Tiruchi-Thanjavur national highway have a reason to rejoice as the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has directed the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to take expeditious steps to build service lanes along the 14-km city stretch of the highway between Thuvakudi and Palpannai in Tiruchi.
The court has also ordered the NHAI to proceed with the land acquisition process for the project as there was no legal impediment for the land acquisition proceedings to be completed.
“Considering the fact that the matter has unnecessarily dragged on from 2014, which in our considered opinion, without any valid cause, it is a high time for the NHAI to take expeditious steps to complete the above exercise and we hope and trust that the service road will be formed within a period of six months from today (October 15, 2019),” the court had said while disposing a batch of petitions on the matter.
Significantly, the court has accepted the opinion of the Chief Engineer, Construction and Maintenance, State Highways Department, that the width of service lanes can be 45 metres on normal stretches, 60 metres on stretches at five locations where vehicular underpass or foot over bridges are to be constructed and 50 metres on 10 other locations where bus bays are to be built.
The issue has been festering since the NHAI executed the four-laning project on the Tiruchi-Thanjavur national highway (NH-67) several years back.
Local residents have been demanding the construction of service lanes, citing frequent accidents, many of them fatal ones.
Although the NHAI had made provisions, the service lanes were not built owing to non-availability of lands. An initial proposal for land acquisition on the stretch for building service lanes of 60 metres width was dropped owing to stiff opposition from local traders.
The road stretch runs along the most industrialised segment of the district and is highly urbanised with a large number of industrial units, commercial establishments, schools and residential colonies all along.
Local residents organised themselves into an umbrella organisation, Federation for Retrieval of Tiruchi-Palpannai-Thuvakudi Service Roads, to launch a series of agitations.
Subsequently, the State government issued an order sanctioning ₹84.5 crore to be given towards compensation for the land to be acquired for the service lanes along the highway.
However, the service lanes could not be laid as more funds were required as per revised estimates to acquire about 35.51 hectares of land.
The State Highways Department suggested that the width of the service lanes be restricted to 45 metres and the land could be acquired to that extent utilising the already sanctioned fund. But the residents objected to any move to reduce the width of the service roads from the originally planned 60 metres.
The NHAI too favoured laying the service lanes for a width of 60 metres.
In 2014, some land owners moved the High Court against the land acquisition and subsequently the federation too filed a petition before the court seeking a direction to build the service road for a width of 60 metres.
Addressing a press conference here on Friday, the federation organisers S. Subramaniyan, S. Sakthivel, A. Natarajan and joint organiser M. Premkumar, urged the NHAI and State government to immediately initiate steps to complete the land acquisition and construction of service lanes as per the orders of the court.
“The Special District Revenue Officer should immediately begin the land acquisition work. Work on shifting of utilities such as electricity poles and water pipelines should be taken up simultaneously,” they demanded.
They also urged the NHAI to build vehicular underpasses instead of the foot overbridges proposed at the five locations along the stretch. This would enable motorists to cross over the highway smoothly without any problem, they contended.
