The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) on Thursday told the Madras High Court that it had been decided to lay a greenfield eight-lane expressway from Chennai to Salem because widening of a couple of existing highways between the two cities would require demolition of several residential, commercial and industrial structures and still it may not be sufficient to cater to the needs of burgeoning traffic.
NHAI project director P.T. Mohan made the submission in a counter affidavit served on advocate A.P. Suryaprakasam, who had filed a public interest litigation petition opposing the acquisition of wetlands for the expressway. According to the counter, the expressway would bring down the travel time from five to two-and-a-half hours, cut down diesel consumption by 2.45 lakh litres every day and result in annual saving of ₹700 crore.
Environmental benefits
“Due to these savings, there will be a reduction in carbon emission and atmospheric pollution levels,” the project director said. He said that vehicles from western districts such as Salem, Namakkal, Karur, Erode, Tirupur and Coimbatore were now using either the Chennai-Tindivanam-Ulundurpet-Salem route spanning across 334 km or the Chennai-Kancheepuram-Vellore-Krishnagiri-Dharmapuri route.
Claiming that the number of vehicles plying on both the routes had breached the capacity of the existing highways, Mr. Mohan said: “With the passage of time, these roads will be the most congested like Anna Salai and Poonamallee High Road [in Chennai].. In several locations, widening of the existing roads will involve additional acquisition of land (nearly 15 m on both sides for an area of 2,200 hectares approximately) and dismantling of several structures.”
Hence, it was decided to lay a new expressway and a Bengaluru-based private firm was engaged by NHAI to prepared a project report.
The firm proposed an alignment starting from Chennai outer ring road at Mannivakkam to Ariyanur in Salem. Hence, the 57.30-km stretch from Salem to Harur was declared as NH179A on June 6, 2017 and a further stretch of 220 km from Harur to Tambaram was declared as NH179B on March 1, 2018.
An application was submitted to the Union Ministry of Environment to obtain environmental clearance and an expert appraisal committee of the Ministry recommended grant of terms of reference on May 7.
The ToR was approved by the Ministry on June 8. A week later, the Indian Institute of Technology — Dhanbad was requested to make a comprehensive assessment of the impact that could be caused on biodiversity.
The request was accepted on June 16 and NHAI deposited ₹ 21 lakh in the account of Department of Environmental Science of IIT- Dhanbad on June 26 as advance payment for carrying out the study. Since, the alignment passes through 9.95 km of reserve forest, permission was obtained from the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests for conducting a field survey. Permission for diversion of the forest lands for the express way could be obtained only after completion of the survey.
In the meantime, a notification was issued on May 23 for acquisition of lands required for the project since it was essential for obtaining environment clearance. NHAI claimed that the PIL petitioner’s contention that environmental clearance must have been obtained before commencing the land acquisition proceedings amounted to putting the cart before the horse. It assured the court that the clearance would be obtained after following due procedures of law.
