The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has scheduled timeline for 23 new highways, including a network of expressways and economic corridors across India, which will be ready by March 2025.
Four expressways, including Delhi-Mumbai (1,350 km), Ahmedabad-Dholera (110 km) and Amritsar-Jamnagar (762 km) and Ambala-Kotputli (310 km) are scheduled for completion by March 2023.
Nine more will be ready by March 2024. These include Delhi-Amritsar-Katra (600 km), Bengaluru-Chennai (272 km), Kanpur-Lucknow (63 km), UER II in Delhi (75 km), Raipur-Vizag (464 km), Durg-Raipur-Arang (92 km), etc.
Apart from this, nine other greenfield highways will be completed by March 2025. These include Surat-Solapur (464 km), Chennai-Salem (277 km), Kharagpur-Siliguri (235 km), Solarpur-Kurnool (318 km), Nagpur-Vijayawada (457 km).
The combined length of these expressways is close to 7,800 km and will see investment of approximately Rs 3.3 lakh crore in the next five years.
The network of expressways is spread across the country connecting Surat, Solapur, Lucknow, Vizag, Chennai, Bengaluru, Vijywada, Raipur, Kota, Kharagpur and Siliguri. The projects with 2023 and 2024 deadline will be bid out by 2022.
The move is aimed at ensuring seamless movement of people and cargo, including heavy vehicles.
At present, cargo vehicles in India cover about 400 km per day, which is at least 50 percent less than global standard. Also, there is scope to reduce the cost and time by up to 50 percent.
To ensure there is no fund crunch, NHAI will set up Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) to fund these projects. The SPV will be set up for Delhi-Mumbai Expressway for which the NHAI Board comprising members from Niti Aayog and finance and highways ministries has given the go-ahead. NHAI has even registered the SPV.
The investment made in the project would be recovered from toll collections, which includes auctioning the tolling right for 15-20 years to a private entity to get the money upfront.