Supreme Court notice on plea for common duct on highways to avoid digging

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to hear a plea seeking directions to the Centre to mandatorily provide a common duct for all public utilities in the construction plan of highways and other roads, to avoid unnecessary re-digging.

A bench, headed by Chief Justice S.A. Bobde and comprising Justices A.S. Bopanna and V. Ramasubramanian, after examining the plea, said: "It is a good idea". The top court issued notice to the Centre, the National Highway Authority of India and others on the plea by Harapriya Patel.

Patel claimed her residence is situated along the National Highway No 10 and she was deeply aggrieved by the perennial maintenance work of highways on account of re-digging and trenching, leading to numerous road accidents leading to loss of life and traffic jams, inconveniencing commuters.

"The nature of injury caused or likely to be caused to the public is that huge amount of public funds goes to waste each year on account of duplication of civil work on account of construction of road at first and re-digging it to lay utility ducts later," said the plea filed through advocate Anirudh Sanganeria.

The plea contended that the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways saw an increase of 10 percent in its budgetary allocation, but a large chunk of it is through monetisation of national highways by the NHAI which can be further boosted by commercial usage of common utility duct.

The petitioner said the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways on November 22, 2016 issued guidelines for provision of utility ducts, preferably "as close" to the extreme edge of the Right of Way (RoW). "It has been made mandatory by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways in the construction of National Highways with four and six lanes. However, the said guidelines are compulsorily applied in most of the Road Projects," added the plea.

The petitioner also cited Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari's statement that country's two lakh kilometres of highways can be used for laying optic fibre and oil and gas pipes, which will help the ministry earn additional revenues.