NHAI Writes a One-Metre Cattle Wall Into New Highways

The National Highways Authority of India has ordered a 1-metre wall along new high-speed corridors to keep stray cattle off the road. The rule is in the first common design code for four- and six-lane access-controlled national highways, issued on September 21, 2026. Expressways are left out.

The same Monday, NHAI told the Supreme Court it cannot herd those animals off roads already built and put the cost at about ₹7,000 crore.

A One-Metre Wall for Roads Not Yet Built

The Press Information Bureau said the guidelines will govern detailed project reports for upcoming greenfield corridors and for brownfield stretches being rebuilt as access-controlled roads. Until now, NHAI said, those corridors had no separate design code of their own, and project reports drifted. The long-term map under Viksit Bharat 2047 still points at 50,000 km of access-controlled high-speed corridors. Operational stock of that class stands at 3,052 km.

Access control is the point of the wall. The PIB text pairs cattle with encroachments and with people walking in off adjoining land. It prescribes a 1-metre-high boundary wall along the outer edge of each corridor. Lane counts and land width will follow a traffic test, not a one-size drawing.

HIGH-SPEED CORRIDOR WIDTH BY TRAFFIC

Interchanges with ramps are to sit at crossings with expressways, national highways, state highways and busy arterial roads, and at links to ports, airports, multi-modal logistics parks, industrial areas and major tourist sites. Drivers are to get advance direction signs at 5 km, 2 km, 1 km and 500 metres before exits, depending on the sign layout.

NHAI posted the release on its official account without mentioning cattle in the caption. The wall is in the fine print of a design code sold as uniformity and speed.

In a major step towards building a future-ready National Highway network, NHAI has issued comprehensive guidelines for the planning and design of High-Speed Access-Controlled National Highways, other than Expressways.

The guidelines establish a uniform framework for preparation… pic.twitter.com/aXHDl1eNVd

— NHAI (@NHAI_Official) September 21, 2026

NHAI Asks the Court to Shift the Cattle Bill

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for NHAI, mentioned the matter before Chief Justice Surya Kant on September 21, 2026. He said local authorities, not the highway builder, should deal with animals loitering on roads. NHAI said doing the job itself would cost around ₹7,000 crore. The Chief Justice agreed to list the plea before the special bench that had issued the directions.

The application, filed through advocate-on-record Nishant Awana in the suo motu case In Re: “City Hounded by Strays, Kids Pay Price,” asks the court to clarify Direction G of the May 19, 2026 judgment. That direction required NHAI, working with states, to put in place a mechanism for stray cattle and other animals on national highways and national expressways. The May judgment also told NHAI to deploy specialised transport, earmark holding space, tie up with gaushalas and set up a watch system.

NHAI told the court those lines should not be read as a duty to own and run shelters, gaushalas or transport fleets across the network. It leaned on the National Highways Authority of India Act, 1988, and on the Control of National Highways (Land and Traffic) Act, 2002. Section 37 of the 2002 Act already bars an animal from standing on a highway without safety control and lets the Highway Administration remove and hold an animal that is blocking the road. A central notification dated October 29, 2025, appointed district magistrates as Highway Administrations for the relevant stretches.

The authority said the national highway net run by NHAI, NHIDCL and state public works departments is about 1.46 lakh kilometres, and that its budget is meant for building, upkeep and debt, with no separate head for animal shelters. It offered to help identify hot spots and to coordinate capture and transport, while leaving removal, custody and shelter to states, local bodies and Highway Administrations.

The Chief Secretaries of all States and Union Territories, together with the Chairperson, National Highways Authority of India, shall ensure strict enforcement of these directions through appropriate administrative orders and field-level monitoring. They shall hold the concerned officers personally accountable for lapses or recurring incidents in their respective jurisdictions.

Supreme Court of India, November 2025 order, In Re: City Hounded by Strays

That November 7, 2025 order, from a bench headed by Justice Vikram Nath, grew out of the stray-dog case and then reached cattle on highways. The court had said accidents involving cattle and other stray animals on public roads were frequent, and that NHAI, with transport and municipal bodies, should get the animals off highways and into shelters, gaushalas or pounds with food, water and veterinary care. It also wanted round-the-clock highway patrols and helpline numbers on the road so drivers could report animals or crashes.

Four Days of Rules for a Long Court Fight

The design code did not arrive in a vacuum. Four days earlier, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways sent highway agencies and state governments a standard operating procedure on stray cattle and other animals. The ministry’s circular called their presence on national highway carriageways a “serious and continuing threat to road safety.”

FROM THE COURT ORDER TO THE WALL

1. October 29, 2025: The Centre appoints district magistrates as Highway Administrations under the 2002 Act.
2. November 7, 2025: The Supreme Court directs NHAI and states to remove cattle and stray animals from highways and to run 24-hour patrols.
3. January 2026: NHAI starts a pilot with Reliance Jio on the Jaipur-Agra and Jaipur-Rewari corridors, sending location alerts about 10 km before cattle-prone stretches.
4. February 9, 2026: NHAI says it has opened Gokuldham, a gaushala near Tunnel No. 4 at Malyawar on the Kiratpur-Manali corridor in Himachal Pradesh.
5. May 19, 2026: The court judgment’s Direction G requires NHAI to put a coordinated stray-animal mechanism in place.
6. September 17, 2026: MoRTH issues the SOP on removal, hot spots, owner tracing and shelters.
7. September 21, 2026: NHAI issues the high-speed corridor guidelines and, the same day, asks the court to clarify that it does not have to run the shelters.

Under the SOP, highway agencies must take animals off national highways and expressways and move them to a shelter, pound or gaushala named by the state. They bear that transport cost, which may be paid per animal. States, districts and local bodies must find or build the shelters: one every 100 kilometres, or every 50 kilometres in sensitive areas. Hot spots are to be marked on the PM Gati Shakti platform, logged stretch by stretch, and reviewed at least once every six months. Patrol vehicles and, where they exist, advanced traffic systems are to watch those stretches around the clock. Owners, once traced, face fees and fines under cattle-trespass law.

Railways Already Fenced the Same Problem

Indian Railways reached for a physical barrier years earlier, after high-speed Vande Bharat sets kept hitting cattle on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad route. Western Railway’s chief public relations officer, Vineet Abhishek, said the zone put up W-beam fencing, the same crash-barrier shape NHAI uses on roads, after a Mumbai Central-Gandhinagar train struck several animals near Ahmedabad in October 2022 and damaged its nose cone.

Western Railway recorded 538 cattle run-overs on the Ahmedabad-Mumbai route in 2022-23, 289 in 2023-24, and 101 in 2024-25, an 81% drop from the first of those years. By July 23 of 2025-26 it had 12 collisions, against 27 in the same stretch of the previous year. Abhishek said the Mumbai-Vadodara-Ahmedabad section had become the only long cattle-proof stretch on Indian Railways, which would let trains run at 160 kmph. Where fencing was fully closed, the zone had earlier reported zero run-overs.

A 1-metre highway wall is a different object from a W-beam track fence, and it applies only as new high-speed corridors are designed or rebuilt. It does not fence the ordinary national highway in the next district. The railway numbers still show what a continuous barrier can do when the animals are the hazard and the vehicles cannot swerve.

Who Must Shelter Cattle Along 1.46 Lakh Kilometres?

Animal control is a state subject. National highways are a central asset. The SOP tries to split the work. The court file is where that split is being fought.

WHO THE SOP AND THE COURT PUT ON THE HOOK

• Highway agencies: They must take animals off the carriageway, pay for the move, log each incident, and patrol hot spots.
• State and district offices: They must set up and run shelters or pounds every 100 km, or every 50 km where the risk is higher.
• District magistrates: As Highway Administrations they already have the 2002 Act power to remove an animal that is blocking the road.
• Cattle owners: Once traced from pound records, they face fees and fines under cattle-trespass law.
• NHAI in the Supreme Court: It says it will coordinate and, where it can, give contractual help, but will not own a national shelter chain.

That plea sits beside a shelter NHAI has already opened. In February 2026 the authority said its Gokuldham shelter for about 100 cattle at Malyawar would take in animals found on the four-lane Kiratpur-Manali highway, with fodder and a veterinary doctor for those hurt in crashes. One site on one corridor is not a network. It is also proof that NHAI can build a gaushala when it chooses to, which is why the court fight is about duty and budget, not about whether a shelter can exist.

Ordinary national highways still carry the animals. A driver on the Prayagraj-Raebareli stretch flagged cattle on the carriageway two days before the guidelines went out. Sealed high-speed corridors will not fix that road. If service roads, farm crossings and bus access are thin in the new DPRs, villages along the fence line lose the informal cuts they used, and the cattle walk the unfenced highway instead.

No Median Cuts, Except Every 5 km

The cattle wall is one piece of a sealed cross-section. The guidelines bar openings in median walls on access-controlled highways. Collapsible barriers may sit every 5 km for emergency and maintenance vehicles. Modular concrete or plastic jersey barriers, used to split lanes and stop head-on crashes, are also allowed.

THE SAFETY KIT AROUND THE WALL

• Median rule: No openings in median walls, with collapsible gaps only every 5 km for emergency and maintenance crews.
• Jersey barriers: Modular concrete or plastic walls may separate lanes where a solid median wall is not used.
• Bridges and tunnels: A median wall with metal crash barriers on top, and metal barriers on the approaches.
• Merges: Crash cushions with segments that crumple into each other at road merging points.
• Exits: Advance direction signs at 5 km, 2 km, 1 km and 500 metres, depending on the sign layout.

Those rules are for roads meant to run fast, with no tractor in the median gap and no cow in the travel lane. National highways still take a heavy share of India’s crash deaths. MoRTH’s Road Accidents in India 2023 report logged 4,80,583 crashes and 1,72,890 deaths, including 63,112 deaths on national highways in 2023, 36.5% of the national toll, on 31.2% of the crashes. The report does not publish a cattle breakout. The ministry’s own SOP still treats stray animals as a standing crash risk on that network.

Most of the National Highway Map Stays Open

The 1-metre wall will appear in the next round of high-speed corridor drawings. It will not, by itself, clear the 1.46 lakh km that NHAI cited in court. Brownfield upgrades can bring some existing stretches under the new code, a few kilometres at a time, as they are rebuilt with access control. Expressways, which already sit in a tighter class, are outside these guidelines. The 3,052 km of access-controlled high-speed corridor already open is a small slice of the 50,000 km target, and a smaller slice of the highway map drivers actually use.

MoRTH’s SOP, the Gati Shakti hot-spot layer, owner fines and 100-km shelter grid are the tools aimed at the open network. They need state land, fodder, vets and someone to pick up the animal at 2 a.m. NHAI’s court papers say that work is not in its statute and not in its budget. The special bench has yet to hear that plea.

Until it does, new high-speed corridors will be drawn with a 1-metre wall. The cattle on the rest of the map remain a patrol problem, a pound problem, and a case still listed before the Supreme Court.