A division bench of Chief Justice Madan Bhimarao Lokur and Justice Utpalendu Bikas Saha imposed a fine of Rs 5,000 each on Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh governments for the failure of their public works departments to file replies to affidavits within the requisite time.
The Nagaland government remained unrepresented in the court today during the hearing of the public interest litigation filed by the All Assam Contractors’ Association.
Since Nagaland also did not file an affidavit contesting the PIL in due time, the court assumed that the Nagaland government agrees with the claims made by the petitioner.
The remaining respondents, including the Union ministry of road transport and highways, National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), Assam and Meghalaya governments, filed their affidavits today.
The court today asked the All Assam Contractors Association to file a counter affidavit within two weeks.
The association in its PIL stated that because of certain lapses on part of the ministry of road transport and highways, the National Highways Authority of India and the public works departments of the five states, there has been an inordinate delay in completion of the East-West Corridor and the Special Accelerated Road Development Programme in the region.
The National Highways Authority of India is implementing the East-West Corridor project while the respective public works departments of the state governments are the implementing agencies for the Special Accelerated Road Development Programme.
According to the petitioner, these delays in road construction had resulted in huge misuse of public funds amounting to thousands of crores of rupees at the expense of taxpayers.
Special Accelerated Road Development Programme spokesman Dipak Choudhury said the delay had caused immense hardship to the people and hampered development in the northeastern states.
The East-West Corridor was scheduled to be completed by 2009 but the target has now been extended to 2012, leading to cost escalation, almost twice the stipulated cost of Rs 5,300 crore.
The East-West Corridor in the Northeast runs from Silchar-Hojai-Haflong-Lanka-Nagaon-Guwahati-Kokrajhar (onward to West Bengal).