Nagpur-Katol NH gets clearance under FCA

Work on the 50-km section on Nagpur-Katol national highway will start soon as the National Highways Authority of India has received stage-I clearance under the Forest Conservation Act (FCA), 1980. The highway will connect Kalmeshwar and terminate at Katol and involved an investment of ₹1,350 crore. The highway is one of the major links connecting Nagpur-Katol–Warud-Amravati and further Madhya Pradesh as NH-353J starts 13km from the Zero Mile near Fetri T-point junction. The 5-km bottleneck between Katol Naka and Fetri will be left out if the road starts from the outer ring road, informed Project Director at NHAI, Abhijeet Jichkar. The road stretch will be treated as a one-time improvement as per extant policy. The 13km stretch will be handled in the second phase as the project has been divided into two phases. The first phase is designed keeping in view that the highway traffic would be allowed up to the outer ring road (ORR) and then follow it without entering the city. An Aurangabad agency has been finalized to complete the project after tendering process. The road is predominantly an orange-producing belt and will help the orange industry. Upgrading the existing two-lane road to four-lane with paved shoulders will facilitate better transportation in terms of fast, congestion-free movement of traffic and will also ensure improvement in people-to-people contact in nearby towns.