Nitin Gadkari launches Plantation Drive for Green Highways Project

Union Minister of Road Transport & Highways and Shipping Shri Nitin Gadkari on Friday launched the initial plantation drive on 1,500 km of National Highways at a cost of about Rs 300 crore under the National Green Highways Mission in New Delhi.

The launch of 1,500 km under the Mission will employ 15,000 people . The Minister further said that the project may even be linked with the NREGA scheme. The afforestation is expected to help in sequestering approximately 12 lakh mt carbon annually.

Gadkari said it is a unique venture and the government welcomed start-ups to join it.

Under the Green Highways Project, the government has made it mandatory to set aside 1 per cent of the total project cost of any NH contract to a Green Fund corpus that will be used for plantation purposes.