The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has issued letters to the district authorities to stay change in NOCs, sale deeds, land use, registries of land till DPRs are prepared for NHAI projects to avoid land fraud similar to the 2016 Hoshiarpur land ‘scam’. One of the letters sent to the Deputy Commissioner (DC) of Hoshiarpur unveiled that the highway authority plans to construct the 4-laning of an existing Phagwara-Hoshiarpur 2-lane highway (NH-344B), including a bypass of Hoshiarpur and Phagwara. As per an IE report, the office initiated survey number verification by patwaris falling in the alignment is currently underway for the project. The letter further mentioned that the alignment of the subject project stretch is accessible quickly now, and they cannot rule out the possibility of leaking out sensitive information. Hence, as per the report, the chances of land conversion or sale of land falling in the alignment are high. The letter said that these instances were reported in Punjab too earlier, which resulted in dropping the highway development proposal or extra cost burden to the state and arbitration cases or land disputes. The authorities of NHAI looked for special attention from revenue authorities to avoid these cases. As indicated by the list sent to this office for Hoshiarpur tehsil of the district of Hoshiarpur till 31 August 2021, or completion of proceedings of 3 A notification under National Highway Act 1956, the NHAI letter asked for intervention to pass a stay order against any NOC’s issuance for change in land use or sale deed or registries of land for the villages to be extra cautious. Officials of NHAI told the media that they follow such methods for every project. A similar process was adopted for the Jalandhar-Katra Highway. The officials of the highway authority told the media that they had to construct the Jalandhar bypass after the Hoshiarpur land scam of 2016, and for that, the NHAI was supposed to obtain land of 392 acre in 26 Jalandhar villages. The Jalandhar bypass, which is 29.5 km long, was to link NH-71 with NH-70 from Chuharwali village to Phagwara road via Talhan village, but NHAI was forced to shelve that project in 2019 as it found several irregularities similar to the Hoshiarpur land scam in the Jalandhar project where a land mafia implemented land deals before highway authority could acquire the same area for constructing the bypass in some villages. Image Source Also read: NHAI to raise minimum distance of wayside construction to 7.5 m