NEW DELHI: The government has allowed the National Highways Authority of India to compensate road developers for delays not attributable to them, potentially unlocking investment of nearly Rs 35,000 crore in 34 stalled projects.In a separate decision, the government empowered road transport and highways ministry to approve projects with civil construction cost of up to Rs 1,000 crore, approving a proposal to take out land costs from to speed up decision-making. Both the decisions were taken by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs on Wednesday.“The CCEA has given its approval for authorising National Highways Authority of India ( NHAI ) to allow extension of concession period for all current projects in BOT ( toll ) mode that are languishing during the construction period due to causes not attributable to the concessionaire,” the government said in a statement.The proposal also authorises NHAI to pay compensatory annuities to the developer for the actual period of delay upon successful completion of the project. In all, stuck road projects of about 3,500 km are expected to be revived.“The Cabinet has taken a very bold decision to allow the ministry of road transport and highways to go into the merits of each case and wherever the delays are not attributable to the developer, to extend the tolling period if that should be required and take such measures, which will once again revive these toll projects and get them to operation,” coal and power minister Piyush Goyal told the media.The relief is subject to many conditions including that the project has to be completed within three years. NHAI will now call the concessionaire and the bankers to sort out the issues, besides helping in releasing of more funds. “We will extend the concession agreements of investors in case the delay in project is not on their part. Banks will be taken on board and we’ll try to get funds released for projects,” NHAI chairman Raghav Chandra told ET.Work on half of these projects has already started in past two-three months, he said. “After the cabinet decision of extending the concession agreements, financial institutions are not likely to hesitate in releasing credit,” Chandra said. Several of these projects were stuck because of government clearances on land acquisition and environmental nods.In recent months, the government has unlocked over 280 road projects worth at least Rs 3 lakh crore.The CCEA also allowed separation of construction and land cost in case of road projects to allow the road ministry to clear more projects. This was proposed by road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari to get speedy clearances in place for projects. This will enable ministries to clear more projects without having to go to CCEA. All road projects costing over Rs 1,000 crore had be approved by a mechanism involving the finance ministry and eventually CCEA. Removing the land cost from total cost will mean that many projects will remain below the threshold and can be cleared by the ministry itself, thereby speeding up approvals. Land can account for as much as 40% of project costs. “The CCEA, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has given its approval to segregate construction cost from cost for land acquisition, centages and preconstruction activities,” an official statement said.