The government will start working on selling the ground-handling arm of erstwhile national carrier Air India and the Expression of Interest (EoI) is expected in the next fiscal, an official said. "We already have the Cabinet approval for selling the subsidiaries of Air India. "So we will come out with an EoI inviting bids for one of the ground-handling arms in the next fiscal," an official told PTI.
Despite the hope that lessons will be learnt, the next accident invariably shows that nothing has been learnt -- or if learnt, they have been ignored, observes Prosenjit Datta.
Once the scheme is implemented 70-80 per cent of the freight would move along national highways as against the current 40 per cent, says Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari.
The ministry is also holding a road show aimed at projecting investment opportunities in the sector. The visit is significant as the ministry is scouting investment of $70 billion for road construction in the next 3-4 years, out of which about $45 billion is expected to come from the private sector, including $10 billion from foreign investors.
Stocks of smallcap and midcap companies, which had caught the fancy of retail investors, also feature in the portfolio of leading politicians in addition to bluechip stocks.
Pakistan's restive Balochistan province has come to a standstill and has been facing unrest with several political and nationalist parties launching an indefinite blockade of all national highways from Wednesday against alleged rigging of the election results.
On Sunday morning, the sun shone brightly on vintage cars parked in symmetry on the grounds of ITC Maurya in New Delhi. The owners were making sure the old beauties turned up spick and span for a rally organised by ITC Hotels in partnership with the Heritage Motoring Club of India. The rally would end at ITC Grand Bharat in Gurugram, Haryana, later in the day.
National Highways Authority of India is working on a proposal to scrap the 30 to 35 per cent premium on toll charged on highways that bypass cities.
Machinery and manpower have been deployed, but stones falling from the hills are obstructing the road opening work, the officials said.
To centralise process by setting up special units in each state.
The road will help in transportation of goods and further development of SMEs in North East India
The estimated cost of the metrino is Rs 50 crore per km and each pod can accommodate three to four persons, Megha Manchanda/Business Standard reports from New Delhi.
The Ministry of Surface Transport and Highways will set up a road safety fund with an initial corpus of Rs 120 crore (Rs 1.20 billion).
Attempts to resume Manipur State Transport (MST) services on Saturday suffered a setback after buses heading from capital Imphal to the hill districts could not go beyond Imphal valley.
The driver of the ill-fated Hyderabad-bound Volvo bus was overstressed and there were fire crackers inside the vehicle, according to findings of an investigation that probed two recent road mishaps in which 52 persons were killed.
Due to the low power engine, the chances of serious accidents are less compared to other four-wheelers.
He also said there are leaders who stand firm in their ideology but their number is gradually declining.
The truckers organisation, All India Motor Transport Congress has demanded lower toll tax or nearly 62 lakh (6.2 million) trucks would go off roads from August 6, bringing movement of goods throughout the country to a halt.
The impact of hitting the pole was so severe that the front axle of the vehicle was broken, he said.
The central government has finalised GPS-based toll collection to ensure seamless movement of vehicles across the country.
Displaying 'ARMY' on private transport is an attempt to milk the respect and reverence that the common citizen has for a person in the armed forces, observes Colonel K Thammayya Udupa (retd). By writing 'ARMY' and displaying regimental insignias, we expect a few misdemeanours to be overlooked.
The first phase of the prime minister's ambitious Rs 58,000 crore (Rs 580 billion) National Highway Development Project, connecting four metros with four/six lane roads.
Fifteen pilgrims were killed and 18 others wounded in a road accident in the mountainous Ramban district of Jammu region on Saturday night.
Officials said in the evening that a six-metre section of a steel pipe had been inserted into the bored passage. Another section was being welded into it. The plan is to insert 800 mm and 900 mm diameter pipes -- one after the other -- with the help of the giant drill till an escape passage is created for the workers stranded beyond the collapsed portion of the under-construction tunnel.
A local tribunal has awarded Rs 2.52 crore in claim petitions filed by the representatives of Army personnel killed in road accident at Chambalwas on Jammu-Srinagar National highway, sources said
Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari on Wednesday pitched for formulating a policy for using the Reserve Bank of India's rising foreign exchange reserves for funding road projects, saying the country needs low cost finance for such infrastructure projects. Addressing a virtual event organised by industry body CII, Gadkari further said that the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) should also have a financial arm like the power ministry's Power Finance Corporation (PFC). "We have a surplus of dollar reserves in the country. I have decided to talk with the RBI Governor, about how we can formulate a policy by which we can use this foreign exchange reserves for development of infrastructure in the country," he said.
India has world's second largest road network with its National Highways covering a distance of 92,851.07 kms.
The government on Friday extended the validity of motor vehicle documents like driving licence (DL), registration certificate (RC) and permits till June 30, 2021, in view of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In an advisory to states, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) said it is extending the validity of fitness, permit, driving licence, registration and other documents whose extension of validity could not be granted due to lockdown and which had expired since February 1, 2020, or would expire by March 31, 2021. It had earlier issued advisories dated March 30, 2020, June 9, 2020, August 24, 2020, and December 27, 2020, in connection with extension of validity of documents related to the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, and Central Motor Vehicle Rules, 1989.
While inaugurating the projects, Modi said highways construction has reached 27-km a day from mere 12-km a day during the Congress regime.
At least 16 people lost their lives in various rain-related incidents in Telangana while the unprecedented rainfall and floods in Andhra Pradesh over the past three days affected about 4.5 lakh people leading to the evacuation of more than 30,000 to relief camps.
Kamal Nath, minister of road transport and highways, pitched for American investment and advanced technology transfer in infrastructure development in India's road sector in New York last week.
India can become the number one automotive manufacturing hub in the world within five years, but auto companies need to enhance safety features to reduce deaths due to road accidents, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said on Thursday. In his inaugural address at the Auto Expo 2023 here, the minister for road transport and highways asserted that the government's target is to reduce these accidents by 50 per cent before the end of 2024 while asking the auto industry to take suo moto action for road safety as the government doesn't want to make anything mandatory. Gadkari's sentiments were also echoed by Minister of Heavy Industries Mahendra Nath Pandey, who lamented that while India has only 1 per cent of the total overall vehicles, the country accounts for 11 per cent of the total global deaths due to road accidents.
'Peninsular Indians could ask 'Why should we contribute half of India's tax revenues if we account for only a quarter of the seats in the Lok Sabha?'.' 'The rest of the country seems likely to counter that 'democracy means one vote per person irrespective of where that person resides in India'.' 'With no easy answers to this thorny debate, the south's economic ascendancy could end up creating a Hobson's choice.' A revealing excerpt from Nandita Rajhansa and Saurabh Mukherjea's book, Behold the Leviathan: The Unusual Rise of Modern India.
When I asked Krishna Gopal Sengupta, who had travelled through Bangladesh from Chittagong to Petrapole if the interim government had made any impact at ground level, he said, "it's been only a couple of days. They will need some time." Shyam G Menon reports from Petrapole, India's entry point with Bangladesh.
The government began the selection process a year earlier and has twice gone through the process of short-listing candidates.
According to an Andhra government statement, Naidu 'reposed confidence' in the PM's leadership.
"We have conveyed this to the road transport ministry. We go for environment approval for all land we acquire, but land with environment issues requires more approvals," said a senior NHAI official, who did not want to be identified.
A report by a senior official in the Planning Commission has said the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is heading towards bankruptcy, as its debt is set to increase five times in the next three years.
Contentious issues like land acquisition and sharing of toll seem to have put the approval of the new Model Concession Agreement for highway projects on hold.
