The State will seek a review of the top court order that imposed the centreline buffer by pointing out that the order will render “residual holdings entirely unbuildable without statutory acquisition or compensation.”
Keralam will contend that the court directive that no agency shall grant or renew any licence, NOC, or trade approval for any site within highway safety zones without prior NHAI/PWD clearance and all such existing licences for such sites shall be reviewed within 30 days, “threatens to paralyse routine maintenance, essential repairs, reconstruction, and redevelopment of long-standing lawful structures.”
The Supreme Court order in August, which prescribed the restrictions, had created widespread anguish and confusion in the State.
Applying a blanket imposition of the guidelines in the court order will cause thousands of lawful, long-standing local businesses, neighbourhood trade establishments to face immediate operational deadlocks, closure, or administrative paralysis. The processing and clearances of all existing sites will create severe administrative bottlenecks for both the NHAI and State authorities, it will argue.
The State will contend that the prior NHAI/PWD clearance must be confined only to commercial properties seeking new or direct, unregulated vehicular access to the main highway carriageway. The established commercial operations situated behind segregated service roads or within municipal street networks shall be exempted from this regulation, the State will contend.
While pointing out that Keralam is geographically constrained as a narrow, elongated strip bounded by the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea, resulting in a severe scarcity of developable land and a high concentration of human settlements, the State will point out that 11 National Highways are passing through it at an aggregate length of approximately 1,643.807 km.
The implications of a uniform centreline restriction are most critical along NH-66, which runs approximately 664 km across the State and traverses five municipal corporations, 25 municipalities, 59 census towns and 66 grama panchayats.
The acute demographic pressure, severe scarcity of habitable land, and linear settlement topography of Keralam make the rigid application of open-country standards wholly unviable, it will be pointed out.
The NH-66 passes through established urban local bodies and census towns, and approximately 60% of the land directly abutting the corridor is already built-up area. The highway does not pass through vacant, open countryside but traverses established settlements that have evolved over many decades, it will be point out.
Enforcing a 75-metre commercial control line over the officially acquired 45-metre right of way on NH-66 will result in an uncompensated, indefinite freezing of 52.5 metres of private land on either side of the road besides sterilising approximately 16,615 acres of prime land along NH-66 alone, the State will argue before the court.