NHAI to resume work on ECR expansion as Tamil Nadu government issues NOC

CHENNAI: The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) will soon resume work on expanding to four lanes the 105km stretch of the East Coast Road (ECR) between Mahabalipuram and Puducherry. This is after the state government finally issued a no-objection certificate (NOC) on April 8 after the NHAI threatened to abandon the project to expand the twolane road used by more than 14,000 vehicles every day.
NHAI regional officer S P Somasekhar told TOI on Thursday that “work will resume shortly”. The NOC had been stuck as Tamil Nadu Road Development Corporation, the agency that maintains ECR, demanded Rs 222 crore compensation for handing over the land required.

The NHAI refused to pay and road work did not begin though Rs 3,000 crore had been sanctioned under the Bharatmala Pariyojana scheme. The TNRDC’s stand was that it needed the money to repay loans taken to construct and maintain the ECR. It also wanted compensation for revenue lost once the toll plaza on this stretch was handed over to NHAI. After the NHAI wrote to Tamil Nadu chief secretary V Irai Anbu saying it would scrap the project, he referred the matter to Dheeraj Kumar, state highways secretary. Dheeraj Kumar said that NOC had been issued on April 8 and NHAI’s Somasekhar confirmed this. TNRDC officials said the state government had agreed to help them in handling the liabilities. The threat to the project had drawn criticism from the PMK.