The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH)’s move to impose penalties on contractors for accidents on stretches of National Highway built under Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) is a laudable initiative to make private parties involved in the construction of highways accountable for road mishaps. This safety push, however, is not going to lessen worries of commuters and transporters travelling on incomplete stretches of highways in Assam and others in the northeast region under construction. The issues of poorly marked, abrupt diversions on poorly maintained stretches of under-construction highways escalating the risks of road mishaps inherent in the region have been flagged many times, but a visible improvement in the safety regime remains elusive. Poor maintenance of completed stretches of highways in the region also remains a persistent problem, which speaks volumes about MoRTH not taking any effective steps to correct the institutional gaps. The delay in completion of highway projects poses legal hurdles in fixing accountability on the contractors for road accidents, as it is hard to establish a direct link between accident causes and lapses in construction work. In September last year, the MoRTH imposed a penalty of Rs 50 lakh on the contractor of a stretch of the Delhi-Vadodara Motorway for not attending to the defects in a timely manner. The action initiated included termination of the team leader-cum-resident engineer of the authority engineer due to poor supervision and lapses in the services, termination of the site engineer and issuing show causes to the concerned project director and manager (technical) for the lapses. The Ministry has decided to impose a penalty of Rs 25 lakh on contractors if more than one accident occurs in a year on a specific stretch of highway built under the BOT mode, which marks a major shift in accident management and preventive action to ensure that there are no defective stretches on highways which can cause accidents. Contractors are required to maintain the highways built and operated by them under BOT for a long period of 15 to 20 years. Ironically, 74 of 576 highway projects which have been delayed since 2014 across the country are in the northeast region, and the maintenance norms can be invoked against the contractors only after their completion. Natural disasters like floods, landslides, and erosion exacerbate the poor condition of highway stretches in the state and across the region. Yet, there appears to be no urgency on the part of MoRTH or the National Highways Authority of India or the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited to push for engineering designs to address these challenges. Not to speak of long delays in construction, sluggish post-disaster repair of damaged stretches disrupts movement of people and goods along the highways for days and sometimes for weeks and months. This is a pointer of highway maintenance and construction work in the region not being included in the list of priorities for timely execution. According to a report of MoRTH, highlighted in this newspaper, highway projects which spilt beyond their original completion schedule without attaining any of the various stages of project completion and excluding projects under consideration for termination/foreclosure include 17 in Assam, 8 in Sikkim, 7 in Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram, 6 in Nagaland and 4 in Tripura and Meghalaya. The primary reasons cited in the report for delay are issues/bottlenecks relating to land acquisition, statutory clearances/permissions, utility shifting, encroachment removal, law and order, the financial crunch of the concessionaire/contractor, poor performance of the contractor/concessionaire, and force majeure events like the Covid-19 pandemic, heavy rainfall, floods, cyclones, landslides/avalanches, etc. The NE states being located in a geopolitically sensitive region, timely completion of the highway projects and quality maintenance to ensure uninterrupted connectivity remain a strategic necessity. Allocation of a huge fund for undertaking a highway project to improve connectivity in the region reflects the central government’s commitment to accelerate highway projects. Yet, poor maintenance and prolonged delay in execution point towards MoRTH, NHAI, NHIDCL or contractors engaged by them remaining indifferent to the strategic necessity. While accidents and fatalities are also caused by negligence of drivers and violation of traffic norms such as overspeeding, driving without wearing helmets or safety belts, overloading, wrong-side driving, illegal parking of trucks on highways, etc., proper construction and maintenance of highways can significantly reduce the number and severity of accidents. The prevailing situation demands strengthening of the monitoring and oversight mechanism for highway projects in the region. As contracts are awarded to experienced contractors and companies, the delays in execution for the perceived lack of capacity of the states of the region cannot be blamed. As the national highway projects are funded and monitored by MoRTH, the onus of expeditious completion lies on it. While a penalty clause can be imposed on contractors for any lapses in contraction work only after completion of construction, the imposition of such a provision can act as a deterrent and bring about an improvement in highway condition in poorly maintained stretches of the completed projects.