Nineteen years ago, Nitin Gadkari, then the young Public Works Department minister in the Maharashtra cabinet, pushed through the Mumbai Pune Expressway project. The 95-km-long road, was completed in very quick time (by 2002) at a cost of Rs. 1600 crore, but it started out with equity capital of just Rs. 5 crore. Almost immediately, the Expressway radically changed the way we travelled between the two cities.
Mr. Gadkari isn’t so young anymore, but now, as Union Minister for Road Transport & Highways and Shipping, he has an equally audacious plan: to build 12 more such super-roads across India. His objective is to expand the national highway network from 96,000 kms to 200,000 kms. To achieve this, the ministry must build 41 km or road per day as compared to 2 km per day when he took over the ministry. So far, he has managed to raise the rate to 24 kms per day.
Already in progress: an express highway connecting East Delhi to West Delhi, will take more than 80,000 trucks off the roads of Delhi per day. Work on the 135-km-long road, which has an investment plan of Rs. 7558 crore, started in November 2015, and the plan is to complete it by December 2016, within 400 days, a full 512 days faster than the original plan. “I just visited the site and we can meet the target as per the PM’s directions,” Nitin Gadkari, said while in Mumbai earlier this week.
The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), under his ministry, is also planning and implementing the 261-km-long Delhi-Jaipur Express Highway, with an estimated investment of Rs 32,800 crore. “The alignment has been finalised,” Mr. Gadkari said. “We will be finalising this project after speaking to the two chief ministers [Arvind Kejriwal and Vasundhara Raje].”
A third project, an expressway between Mumbai and Vadodara, is up for final bidding, the Minister said. “The tender will be issued before December this year. Then we will start work.” The 380-km road will cost over Rs. 6670 crore.
Also on the NHAI to-do list: express highways between Delhi and Katra in Jammu (which will then extend to Kashmir), Delhi and Meerut, Amravati (Andhra Pradesh’s under-cinstruction state capital) and Hyderabad, Vijayawada and Bengaluru, Ranchi and Kolkata, and Chennai and Bengaluru.
The Minister is taking a personal interest in two more express highways: one connecting the pilgrimage centres of Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri and Yamunotri, the other between Pithoragarh in Uttrakhand and Mansarovar in China.
“[The pilgrimage expressway] is an important road for us,” Mr. Gadkari said. “We are investing Rs. 12000 crore to build 1100 kms of road. We have started work. Orders worth Rs 1000 crore have already been given. It is a totally new alignment through tunnels. It will be an all-season road. There will be no problem in case of heavy rains and cloud bursts.” The route will also have helipads at 15 locations, aside from other roadside amenities. About the Pithoragarh–Mansarovar road, which will save Indian pilgrims the necessity of having to travel through Nepal, he said, “We have completed 65 to 70 per cent of this road. The stretch passing through the Himalayas is in [sub-zero] degree temperature. The Border Road Organisation [BRO] is working on this project. We have imported two special machines from Australia to expedite work. My attempt is that the road will be completed by April next year.”
Mr. Gadkari is confident that the funds for all these projects would be found, “We have 101 road projects which have been completed with money spent by the government. Our annual toll collection is Rs. 10,000 crore. We have decided to monetise these projects and aim to raise Rs 1 lakh crore.” The government has also allowed NHAI to raise Rs. 70,000 through issuance of tax-exempted bonds. In addition, the NHAI plans to set up 36 logistics parks beside the Express Highways through the land pooling method, and the profit from these ventures will go towards funding further road construction work.
Making a jocular reference to the legend of Draupadi’s inexhaustible vessel, Mr. Gadkari said, “I have Draupadi ki thali . There is no problem of funds. Resource and technology are not problems. Strong political will and appropriate vision for development is the most important strength to build infrastructure in the country.”
