Thiruvananthapuram: India National Highway Authority (NHAI) has taken exceptions to the delay in the state government in sending contributions to the concession holders of various toll plazas in the state, accumulating by means of non-payment of users with the KSRTC bus and free passes to the vehicle through this toll plaza .
According to documents accessed by TOI, at least RS 235 Crore matured from the state government under this head to the concession holder.
Of the five toll plazas operating on the highway in the state, namely in Paleksur (Thrissur), Walidaya (Palakkad), Kumbalam and Ponnarimangalam (Ernakulam) and Kollam, KSRTC only paid user fees in Kumbalam.
The concession holder of the Toll Plaza in Palekkara alone has set contributions from KSRTC at Rs 104 Crore until March this year, because of the state government with KSRTC.
The state government has issued a free track to cars, vans, jeeps and lightweight commercial vehicles included in the radius of 10 km from Palekkara Toll Plaza, in 2012.
The government then convinced the concession holder that the cost of users for the vehicle was issued free passes will be paid by government.
But this number has now stacked up to RS 129 Crore, which has also not been paid.
Next, close to Rs 1.5 Crore caused in a similar case in Kumbalam Toll Plaza too.
NHAI has also asked the state government to accelerate the process of payment of compensation and take land ownership for 16 projects in the country carried out by NHAI on the NH-66.
The agency has approved the RS 16,504 Crore as land costs for these projects and has deposited RS 8,601 Crore to the NHAI compensation section.
The state government has deposited RS 3,619 Crore as its part for these projects.
However, the competent authority for land acquisition (Cala) only disbursed Rs 4,675 Crore regardless of the completion of the acquisition process.
In accordance with the agreement between the Government and State Government, the State will bear 25% of the cost of land acquisition for highways in the state, while the rest will be borne by NHAI.
NHAI has also asked the state government to complete his approval to produce 25% of the cost for four highway projects that run to 336km and the cost of development has been estimated at Rs 25,000 Crore.
These include six lanings of the Walayar-vadakkerry section of the NH-544, six lanings from the thrissur-edappally expanse NH-544, including the proposed ernakulam bypass, four lanings of the Kollam-Senghottai section of the NH-744 and four kutta-malappuram section proposed from the proposed NH, the alignment will be resolved soon.