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CM Khattar seeks Nitin Gadkari’s help to end Kherki Dhaula toll bottleneck
The Haryana government has approached the highways ministry to find solution to Kherki Dhaula toll plaza on Gurgaon Expressway, which has been a traffic bottleneck. Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar has sought Nitin Gadkari’s intervention to shift the toll plaza beyond Manesar.
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Sources said Khattar has raised how the toll plaza at Kherki Dhaula beyond Gurgaon has become a roadblock in investment flow to Manesar industrial area. He has suggested Gadkari to direct his ministry officials and executives of National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to take up the issue with the present concessionaires of Gurgaon Expressway and Pink City Expressway, which are implementing the six-laning of highway between Gurgaon and Jaipur.
For long, the Haryana government has been raising the need to do away with the toll plaza with NHAI and has even offered to pay a portion of the compensation that the highways authority would have to give to the present concessionaire. But NHAI has not accepted it.
TOI has learnt that one of the options that the Centre may consider is shifting the toll plaza to Bilaspur, about 16 km away from the exiting toll plaza.
But officials admitted that this will be a tricky issue since it involves two concessionaires. They added buying back the Gurgaon Expressway project is a huge loss-making proposition for NHAI.
First, NHAI would have to hold talks with the existing concessionaire of Gugaon Expressway and then would have to hold negotiations with the Pink City Expressway concessionaire. Sources said since any move of buying back a highway stretch could amount to benefiting the loss-making concessionaires, NHAI would have to take proper safeguards.
TOI had earlier reported that against the demand of Rs 2,000 crore to remove the toll plaza, Haryana’s industrial development agency, HSIIDC, had offered to pay Rs 600 crore.
Removal of Kherki Dhaula toll plaza will benefit lakhs of commuters who travel to Manesar and those who plan to shift to Gurgaon’s news sectors, around Dwarka expressway and Southern Peripheral Road.
The demand for doing away with the Kherki Dhaula plaza had started soon after NHAI and the former concessionaire of the expressway had struck a deal to end toll collection at Sirhaul border near Udyog Vihar. Toll rates for all types of vehicles have gone up since the first toll plaza was removed.
There have been several protests by residents’ organisations and by industry associations against the existing toll plaza. As per the contract agreement, the present concessionaire is allowed to collect toll from all vehicles till 2023. John Miller Jersey
