Parliament to clear roads regulator with punitive powers

New Delhi: Parliament will clear the setting up of the highways regulator in case the government decides to grant punitive powers to the body. “In order to set up a regulator with punitive powers, you have to go to Parliament,” roads secretary Vijay Chibber told reporters on the sidelines of a Ficci event today.[caption id=“attachment_737457” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Priority area. Reuters[/caption] However, if the government decides to do away with the idea of giving punitive powers to the regulator, the nod from other top panels would suffice. On whether the government is looking at granting punitive powers to the proposed road regulator, Chibber said, “The discussions are on… Already had two workshops on the subject and we are hopeful that we would achieve some progress in the next 2-3 months.” Finance Minister P Chidambaram announced in Budget 2013-14 the setting up of a road regulatory authority to address the challenges including financial stress, enhanced construction risk and contract management. The key functions of the proposed regulator are likely to be tariff setting, regulation of service quality, assessment of concessionaire claims, collection and dissemination of sector information, service-level benchmarks and monitoring compliance of concession agreements, among others. Chibber, while addressing a seminar on PPP (Public-Private-Partnership), said that it is not possible for states to leverage finances for all projects therefore PPP is important. “Rising expectations in the road sector are increase in expenditure, leveraging larger finances from the state exchequer is not possible, so PPP is important, also global best practices come through private sector,” Chibber said. He said the sector is battling various issues including paucity of construction material. “We are faced with crisis due to global slowdown, issue of environment clearance and delinking it with the forest clearance,” he said, adding that the exemption from obtaining NOC (No Objection Certificate) under forest clearance is a good move as it was a major deterrent in expeditious implementation of the projects. PTI