after the supreme court ordered an end to sale and registration of bsiii vehicles on environmental grounds union minister for shipping and transport nitin gadkari spoke to sugandha indulkar on the fallout of the decision plans for expanding road infrastructure and the challenges therein what are your thoughts on the supreme court judgment banning sale and registration of bsiii vehicles for environmental reasons i welcome the supreme court judgment i cannot comment upon itas per the law bsiii vehicles should not be registered as of april 1 you have said that the government will look into ways of helping automobile industry reduce their losseswhy should government intervene indias automobile industry is worth about rs 45 lakh crore it offers employment to at least 50 lakh people the government has to look at the holistic implications of this judgement and therefore we may think of ways to help aggrieved parties we have to govern holistically the strategic rs 6000 crore zojila tunnel in jammu kashmir has been pending for long how do you plan to take it forward only two companies from across the world came forward to construct the zojila tunnel earlier after the contract was awarded to a bidder we found certain discrepancies therefore we scrapped it immediately and retendered by the end of this month we should be able to award the new tender construction of this tunnel is a feat in its own right as work can be done only during the three summer monthsthis tunnel is indeed a big challenge for any construction company setting a deadline for this project is difficult as of now the state of roads across india isnt improving at all every monsoon road conditions deteriorate your comments i am responsible for national highways and not so much for roads within a district or town those are the responsibility of local municipal corporations or state governmentscementconcrete roads last for a long time and will solve the problems of potholes what are the top three challenges in expanding indias road transport network the topmost challenge is acquisition of land many plots of vacant land are under local collectors control often many officers are involved in the processits quite difficult to pursue these officers and acquire land for road infrastructure the second important challenge is to procure clearances from forest and environment departments the third and the most important challenge is to convince government officials into making the project work this takes up nearly seven to eight months of office work after which the real construction work can begin i have expedited the whole procedure remarkably in this year ending on march 31 we have spent close to rs 60000 crore only on land acquisition we have already deposited nearly rs 20000 crore in the bank of every state in india the state governments are earning interest returns on the money we have deposited for improving road and transport infrastructure in these states now we have given authority to every collector