Government starts highway denotification

Kolkata: In a bid to bypass the Supreme Court’s ruling of banning liquor outlets within the 500-metre radius of state highways (SH) and national highways (NH), the Mamata Banerjee government has initiated the process of denotification of state highways.

According to a top Public Works Department (PWD) official, the state has denotified certain stretches of 11 state highways (SHs) as “arterial roads”, and had recently issued a notification in this regard. It has been learnt that most of these stretches are so narrow that they were unfit for the highway tag.

The SH stretches that were denotified as arterial roads, include the 32 km stretch of SH-1 which passes through the North 24 Parganas and Nadia, the 22 km stretch of SH-2 passing through Bankura, the 4 km stretch of SH-4 passing through Nadia and North 24 Parganas, the 5 km stretch of SH-3A, passing through North and South 24 Parganas and the 16 km strech of SH-4 through Purulia, Bankura and West Midnapore among others.

The state government had also earlier denotified two stretches of state highways, namely EM Bypass and VIP Road.

Thus, some of the leading luxury hotels along the stretch have not come under the purview of the apex court’s order.

“The district magistrates have been directed to sent us details of such roads along with their lengths. They will also spell out the topography so that it becomes easier for us,” a PWD official said, adding that the aim of the government is to save a host of liquor outlets that are located within a 500 metre radius of NHs and SHs.

Apart from denotifying two SHs, the state government has also decided to issue on-shop licences to all liquor off-shops that are situated within 500 metres of the highways.

A similar initiative to denotify the SHs has been taken up by Rajasthan, Goa and Maharashtra.