Squabble among stakeholders hits road projects.

Too many cooks spoil the broth, they say. This also holds true for road projects with multiple stakeholders.

Take the Panipat-Jalandhar stretch in Punjab. According to the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), this stretch is an example of how managing contract terms in public-private partnership (PPP) projects is becoming difficult because of the many stakeholders involved. This is despite the contract having been signed by two parties - the road developer and NHAI.

Work on the Panipat-Jalandhar stretch on NH-1 has stopped as the developer - a consortium of Soma Enterprises and Isolux Corsan - awaits the Supreme Court's judgement on the issue, which has been reserved since two months now.

HBL