NHAI’s 80% plantation rule must transform J&K’s highways

Editorial

The National Highways Authority of India’s decision to link highway completion certificates and maintenance payments with plantation and tree survival is a welcome step. For Jammu & Kashmir, where highways pass through some of the country’s most fragile mountain ecosystems, it should become a benchmark for how roads are planned, built and maintained.

One of the biggest flaws of Kashmir’s highways has been the lack of adequate tree cover and the poor maintenance of whatever greenery has been planted. Saplings are often planted ceremonially, only to die from neglect. Median landscaping and avenue plantation have too frequently been treated as cosmetic additions rather than essential highway infrastructure.

The revised NHAI guidelines, requiring plantation across at least 80% of the available earmarked Right of Way and a minimum 90% survival rate, offer an important correction. Linking maintenance and annuity payments to survival rates, while requiring timely replacement of dead plants, can bring accountability to an area long neglected.

But Jammu & Kashmir needs to go further.

A green highway is not simply one lined with trees. It is a road designed with ecological sensitivity, slope stability, drainage, wildlife movement and climate resilience in mind. In the Himalayan region, indiscriminate tree felling, poorly designed cuttings, blocked drainage channels and unstable slopes can turn highways into disaster corridors during intense rainfall, landslides and flash floods.

The Union Territory’s highway authorities must therefore adopt a comprehensive green and disaster-sensitive highway framework. Every project should have a scientifically prepared plantation plan, native and climate-resilient species, adequate soil and water management, and a funded multi-year maintenance programme.

Plantation targets must be independently verified, not merely certified on paper. Survival should be assessed across seasons, and contractors held responsible for replacing dead saplings and maintaining established trees.

Jammu & Kashmir deserves highways that do more than connect places. They must protect the mountains, reduce disaster risks, improve the travel experience and contribute to a healthier environment.

The time has come to make every highway project in J&K green, safe and disaster-sensitive—by design, not by promise.