Kerala to Seek Review of Supreme Court Highway Buffer Order

Kerala will approach the Supreme Court seeking a review of its order that prohibits the construction of residential buildings within 40 metres and commercial buildings within 75 metres from the central line of national highways, with the State set to press for exemptions for existing structures.

The August order, which prescribed the centreline buffer, triggered widespread concern and confusion across Kerala. In its review plea, the State is expected to argue that the directive will leave residual holdings entirely unbuildable in the absence of statutory acquisition or compensation.

Kerala is also likely to challenge the requirement that no agency may grant or renew any licence, no-objection certificate or trade approval for sites within highway safety zones without prior clearance from the National Highways Authority of India or the Public Works Department, and that all existing licences for such sites be reviewed within 30 days. The State will contend that this condition threatens to paralyse routine maintenance, essential repairs, reconstruction and redevelopment of long-standing lawful structures.

The State's case rests on the argument that applying the guidelines uniformly would push thousands of lawful, long-established local businesses and neighbourhood trade establishments into immediate operational deadlocks, closure or administrative paralysis. Processing and clearing all existing sites, it will argue, would create severe administrative bottlenecks for both NHAI and State authorities.

Kerala is expected to seek a narrower reading of the prior-clearance requirement, confining it to commercial properties that seek new or direct, unregulated vehicular access to the main highway carriageway. Established commercial operations located behind segregated service roads or within municipal street networks should be exempted, the State will argue.

Highlighting Kerala's geographical constraints as a narrow, elongated strip bounded by the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea, the State will point to a severe scarcity of developable land and a high concentration of human settlements. Eleven national highways pass through the State, with an aggregate length of approximately 1,643.807 km.

The implications of a uniform centreline restriction are most critical along NH-66, which runs about 664 km across Kerala and traverses five municipal corporations, 25 municipalities, 59 census towns and 66 grama panchayats. The State will argue that acute demographic pressure, scarce habitable land and a linear settlement pattern make rigid open-country standards wholly unviable.

According to the State's submissions, NH-66 passes through established urban local bodies and census towns, with roughly 60% of the land directly abutting the corridor already built up. The highway, it will point out, does not run through vacant countryside but through settlements that have evolved over decades.

Enforcing a 75-metre commercial control line over the officially acquired 45-metre right of way on NH-66 would, the State will argue, result in an uncompensated and indefinite freezing of 52.5 metres of private land on either side of the road, besides sterilising approximately 16,615 acres of prime land along the highway alone.