New Highways Act in Tamil Nadu

The Tamil Nadu government is planning to expedite the process for land acquisition for development of its highways by legislating a new Highways Act. It is finding it difficult to acquire land for broadening the state highways and constructing bypasses with about 3,202 hectares of land out of a total of 7,874 hectares needed, still remaining to be acquired. The new Highways Act will see a new land pooling system implemented during land acquisition, ensuring that land owners become partners in the land development process. The land pooling technique will be implemented for the development of roads and highways and the remaining land will be redistributed to the land owners. The system is expected to see land owners getting back about 70-80% of the developed land while minimising land acquisition costs for the government.