New Delhi: The Supreme Court (SC) indicated it was not willing to interfere in the reclassification of national and state highways in Chandigarh as district roads to get around its ban on sale of liquor along highways. More From Livemint »The court was responding to a challenge by Arrive Safe Society of Chandigarh, a non-government organization (NGO) working on road safety on the re-classification of highways in Chandigarh as major district roads. The reclassification by the Chandigarh administration, as in many other states, was done apparently to circumvent an earlier court order that banned liquor sale within 500 metres of state and national highways. It contended that by denotifying state highways and renaming them major district roads, the Chandigarh administration had made a mockery of the Supreme Court order of 15 December 2016 setting out the distance criteria. Calling the notification arbitrary, the plea noted that the notification does not state the reason or criteria for declassifying some roads from “state highways” to “major district roads” while letting some roads remain “state highways”.

Source: Mint July 04, 2017 07:07 UTC