National Green Highway Mission at India CSR Summit 2016

Mumbai: Focusing on green highways, participants from corporate houses, bank and public sector units provided valuable insights on implementing the necessary policies to make the highways greener on the first day of the two-day India CSR Summit and CSR Partnerships Exhibition 2016 at Bombay Convention and Exhibition Centre, Goregaon (East).

The National Green Highways Mission (NGHM) under the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is the nodal agency for effective implementation and monitoring of Green Highways Project.

Dr Ajoy K Bhattacharya, MD at National Green Highways Mission moderated the session that saw participation from eminent stakeholders. “Our mission is to be responsible for implementing the green highways policy. We have around 1 lakh kilometres of highways available for greening and may be in the next ten years, we will have 2 lakh kilometres,” said Dr Ajoy K Bhattacharya, MD at NGHM.

Ms. Induja Rai, advisor at NGHM made an insightful presentation on Adopting a Green Highway where she discussed different possible ways in which corporates and individuals can adopt the initiative. This includes adoption under the corporate social responsibility, public private partnership and by individuals themselves. One of the positive sides of greening the highways is the ability to create sustainable employment opportunities for around 1 lakh people.

The participants included Mr. R Murahari, General Manager at Power Finance Corporation, Mr. Anup Gurvugari, Senior Vice-President at Yes Bank, Mr. Suneel Pande, Vice-President at ITC, Mr. Ajay Kumar Mahapatra, Managing Director at Odisha Forest Development Corporation and Mr. Suresh Chauhan, Fellow and Area Convener of Forestry and Biodiversity group of Water Resources and Forestry Division in TERI.