The management of the Delhi-Gurgaon expressway could soon pass into the hands of the national highway authority of India (NHAI) from DS construction private limited which had been managing the expressway under a public-private-partnership project. The road and highways ministry had cancelled the contract allowing DS to operate the stretch after it emerged that the company had siphoned funds from a common account held by the partners. Following the cancellation, which comes into effect on March 1, NHAI may have to take charge of the managing one of the busiest stretch in the Delhi-Jaipur highway. However, if ministry sources are to be believed, DS is keen on working out a plan to settle the disputes with the ministry and NHAI

NHAI is caught in its own bind having agreed to a faulty contract when the project began. The expressway, NHAI’s first PPP project, was touted to be the model for other PPP projects in the pipeline. The money-siphoning issue comes as a setback to the highways authority.

The dispute started when NHAI found out that DS had siphoned off money from a joint bank account (held by NHAI, the promoter banks and DS) and had invested the money in its own projects. Taking cognizance of the matter, NHAI had served a notice a few months back. According to sources, NHAI had earlier served several notices to DS on various issues like roads maintenance, traffic congestion and increase of the premium. These had all been overlooked by its private partner. The sources also say that DS had fudged the account details to keep the siphoning under wraps. It had also grossly underreported the total number of vehicles passing the expressway thereby reducing NHAI’s draw from the toll collected as the revenue sharing terms remained unrevised.

DS, however, has denied all charges, saying that NHAI is being unreasonable on most of the issues.

The traffic on the expressway has increased rapidly over the past few years. Despite the notices from NHAI, DS had done little to manage the traffic. It turned down NHAI’s request to consider adding more lanes to the expressway. The union road and highways minister, C P Joshi has taken a personal interest in the issue as he belongs to Rajasthan and the expressway sits as a bad patch on the Delhi-Jaipur highway.