Illegal highway dhabas to face eviction as NHAI cracks down on encroachments

Illegal dhabas and eateries along National Highways are set to be removed as part of NHAI's nationwide drive against unauthorised parking and encroachments. The initiative aims to improve road safety, reduce accidents and ensure smoother traffic movement across highway corridors

Kolkata: Illegal dhabas and eateries along the National Highways will be evicted soon to prevent the parking of trucks outside.

This comes at a time when the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) took a major initiative to curb unauthorised parking and encroachments along National Highways to enhance safety and ensure obstruction-free movement.

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This comes after the Supreme Court issued structures against parking of trucks along National Highway stretches, except at designated bye-lays, to prevent accidents.

“Unauthorised parking of vehicles, roadside encroachments and unregulated activities along National Highways pose significant risks to road users and adversely impact traffic flow and safety. To address these challenges, NHAI has identified 595 critical locations of unauthorised parking (along with longitude and latitude details) across different states and is working in close coordination with state governments, district administrations and enforcement agencies for removal of unauthorised parking from National Highways,” the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has said in a statement.

NHAI has also undertaken concerted efforts for the removal of encroachments from National Highway corridors under the provisions of the Control of National Highways (Land and Traffic) Act, 2002.

“To further strengthen institutional coordination, NHAI is working closely with state governments for the establishment of District Highway Safety Task Forces and nomination of nodal officers to monitor compliance and facilitate inter-agency coordination. These mechanisms will support timely enforcement action and enable continuous monitoring of safety-related issues along National Highway network,” the statement said.

The Authority has also directed its field offices to undertake immediate audits of all Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS) installations and ensure that components such as traffic monitoring cameras, video incident detection systems, variable speed detection systems, variable message signboards and emergency call boxes are fully operational.

Deployment of ambulances and recovery vehicles, enhanced highway patrolling, integration of ATMS alerts with enforcement agencies and proactive maintenance of safety infrastructure are being prioritised to enable faster incident response, improved enforcement and safer travel for national highway users across the country.