The reason: The department has asked the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) to provide a 10-m wide green strip along the highways for compensatory deforestation.

A senior NHAI official said, “Several road projects, including parts of the East-West Corridor, are getting delayed. The condition of leaving a continuous stretch of additional 10-m land is difficult to follow, particularly in urban areas. Hundreds of houses and commercial establishments cannot be razed for plantation. It’s impractical.” He added that as in other states, NHAI wants afforestation according to land availability.

NHAI officials maintain that the main highway stretches affected by this condition are Ayodhya-Gorakhpur, Hapur-Moradabad, and Agra-Bharatpur. In patches, about 70 km of work is stalled between Ayodhya and Gorakhpur, while about 10 km of road remained incomplete between Hapur and Moradabad.

Sources said that the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has discussed the issue with NHAI in a meeting held with Cabinet Secretary Shashank Shekhar Singh, last November.

“But, the problem is far from over. The cabinet secretary had assured the NHAI that bottlenecks, coming in way of the highway projects, will be removed,” a official said.

However, a government order released on December 5 stated: “Considering difficulties in providing 10-m land along the highways by the NHAI, it has been decided that NHAI will have to pay an equivalent amount to the forest department for land purchase and plantation.”

The NHAI has now written a letter to the state government to clarify the order. “The NHAI has not paid for acquiring separate land for plantation anywhere in the state. Though we have been providing 10-m green strip as per the state forest conservation rules, we wanted relaxation in the condition where land was not available. We have also requested that the projects should not be stopped in the middle as the matter is being negotiated,” an NHAI official said.

A senior official of forest department, meanwhile, said the conditions imposed under environment clearance may differ in different states. “Besides, the state can also impose certain conditions. States like Uttarakhand or Madhya Pradesh, which have significant forest cover, may not have stringent norms on green strip, but that’s not the case with Uttar Pradesh,” he said.