Yudhvir Singh Malik, the Special Secretary with NITI Aayog, has been appointed as new Chairman of National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). “Yudhvir Malik who was with NITI Aayog joins as new NHAI Chairman in place of Raghav Chandra. Malik had joined NITI Aayog as its Additional Secretary in September last year.

• Prior to joining government think tank, he was CEO of FSSAI from October 20, 2014 to September 23, 2015 — a tenure marked with Maggi noodle ban issue which brought the food regulator into limelight.
• Senior IAS officer Chandra had taken over as the Chairman of NHAI in August last year. Prior to joining NHAI, Chandra was Additional Secretary and Financial Advisor for the Department of Agriculture & Cooperation, ADF and Culture.
• A statutory body under the ministry, NHAI is entrusted with the task of implementing National Highways Development Project (NHDP), India’s largest-ever highways project. The importance of the body can be gauged by the fact that it regulates 92,851 km of national highways across the country.

Do you know?

• The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is an autonomous agency of the Government of India, responsible for management of a network of over 70,000 km of National Highways in India.
• It is a nodal agency of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways.
• The NHAI was created through the promulgation of the National Highways Authority of India Act, 1988.
• NHAI has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Indian Space Research Organisation for satellite mapping of highways.