Chief Operating Officer / India
Three decisions that cost the trust money
- Toll collections across six concessions
- ₹1,236 Cr
- Year ended March 2026; trust revenue, not the operating company's
- Route length operated
- 618 km
- Haryana, Punjab, western Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan
- Toll plazas
- 11
- 136 lanes; over 98 per cent of transactions by FASTag
Decisions & consequences
01Rebuilding a flooded bridge approach instead of reopening it quickly
In July 2023 an exceptional monsoon spell sent water over the approach embankment of a minor bridge on our north Haryana concession. It scoured about 340 metres of slope and undermined the carriageway in one direction. Our maintenance contractor proposed sandbags, boulders and a bituminous patch that could restore four lanes within six days. The corridor revenue team supported that plan, because heavy vehicles were already diverting to a parallel state road.
I did not believe the patch would survive the rest of the season. The cause was a waterway that the original structure could no longer carry, and the same location had shown ponding in 2021. I recommended closing the damaged carriageway, running two-way traffic on the other side for as long as the rebuild required, and adding a relief culvert with stone pitching, subject to the design consultant's drawings and the concession engineer's review.
The managing director agreed, and I presented the decision to the investment manager's risk committee in the same week. Contraflow lasted 22 days. The rebuild cost ₹7.4 crore and toll collections on that concession fell by about ₹3.6 crore compared with the previous year's same weeks. We notified the authority under the concession's force majeure procedure; the claim for an extension of the concession period remains under review, and I have not counted on it.
Two minor collisions occurred in the contraflow during the first two days, before we added barriers, lighting and police support at the crossover points. The rebuilt approach carried the 2024 and 2025 monsoon flows without closure, although neither season matched the 2023 rainfall, so it has not yet faced the same test.
The episode changed our pre-monsoon programme across all six concessions: every culvert with a history of ponding is now surveyed against its present catchment, not its original drawing. I would act differently in one respect. I would agree the contraflow traffic-management plan with district police before the first heavy rain, rather than design it during the emergency.
Closing median openings after eleven deaths on one stretch
A nine-kilometre stretch of our six-lane western Uttar Pradesh concession recorded 26 crashes and eleven deaths in 2022. Most occurred at two median openings that villages and a roadside dhaba cluster used to cross, often with tractors and two-wheelers moving across fast traffic at night. Neither opening was in the approved layout, but both had existed for years and local people depended on them.
Closing them required the authority's approval through the concession's procedures, and it would lengthen journeys for about 4,000 residents. The village panchayats objected. Our corridor head was concerned that protests could block the toll plaza fourteen kilometres away. The investment manager questioned a 2.4-kilometre service-road link costing ₹3.2 crore, which fell outside the approved scope and would not be recovered from tolls.
I recommended the full package: closure of both openings, the service-road link to an existing underpass, better lighting, and a new staffed ambulance and patrol post at the stretch's midpoint, funded by us. Before any notice went up, the corridor head and I met each panchayat with district officials and explained the crash record, the new route and the timetable.
The authority approved the closures in 2023, after review by the concession engineer. The link opened in November 2023. Median response time to crashes on the stretch fell from 29 to 16 minutes. In 2024 the stretch recorded 13 crashes and four deaths; in 2025, 15 crashes and five deaths. A state bypass that opened in mid-2024 also removed some heavy traffic, so I describe our measures as a contribution rather than the whole cause.
We gave up money and some local goodwill: one village still regards the closure as imposed on it. The change also made fatal-crash locations a standing item in every corridor's maintenance plan. If I did this again, I would involve the villages before choosing the link's alignment, not after, because their route knowledge would have produced a better design.
Paying for a final overlay on a concession about to end
Our Rajasthan concession, 74 kilometres of four-lane highway with two plazas, transfers to the authority in March 2027. Its periodic overlay fell due in the 2025–26 working season. The agreement requires the road to meet specified condition standards at transfer, confirmed through a joint inspection, with the cost of unrectified defects recoverable from the concessionaire.
Two options went to the investment manager. A full overlay was estimated at ₹54 crore. Patching and micro-surfacing would cost about ₹19 crore and, on our pavement model, keep most sections just above the handback standard in early 2027. Aparna Velhankar, the investment manager's chief financial officer, argued for the cheaper programme. The concession would earn only one more year of tolls, and the full overlay would reduce distributable cash in that year. Her concern was legitimate: unitholders would bear a cost with little remaining income to recover it.
I recommended the full overlay. Our model's margin was thin, the 2023 monsoon had already shown how quickly an ageing surface can fail, and a disputed handback could cost more than the saving while leaving users on a deteriorating road. I also recommended open tendering in two packages with roughness and rutting acceptance criteria. Haldhara's construction division bid for one package, so the evaluation followed the related-party process with sponsor nominees excluded; the division was not the lowest compliant bidder.
The board approved the overlay. Work finished in February 2026 at ₹51.6 crore. A network survey vehicle found 96 per cent of lane kilometres within the acceptance value; the contractor rectified the rest at its own cost by May 2026. Distributions from that concession were lower that year, as Aparna had said they would be.
The joint inspection is planned for December 2026, and the transfer itself has not happened, so the decision's final test is ahead. I would do one thing differently: begin the handback register and the conversations with the corridor's 212 employees and contracted staff three years before transfer, not two.