Context

• Recently, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI)has developed a mobile App, ‘Harit Path’ to facilitate creation of Green Highways across the country.

Key Points

• The App will help to monitor location, growth, species details, maintenance activities, targets and achievements for each and every plant.
• In order to track the growth and health of the plants, photographs along with data of the plants captured using Harit Path App shall be uploaded every 3 months on NHAI’s Artificial Intelligence powered Big Data Analytics platform – Data Lake.
• Highway contractors shall be accountable for proper upkeep and maintenance of the plantation and liable to replace the missing/dead plants.
• Performance and growth of the plants shall be linked to the payment to the contractors for this work.
• Recently, NHAI has completed 25 years of its service, to commemorate this it has undertaken ‘Harit Bharat Sankalp’ a nation-wide plantation drive.
• Under this initiative, NHAI planted over 25 lakh plants in 25 days along the stretches of the National Highways between 21st July to 15th August 2020.