Friday, 17 May, 2024
By: Yash Gupte
The work on Ahmedabad-Dholera Expressway is likely to be completed by January 2024. Image Source: IANS
According to the data released by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, the construction of highways till December 2022 has been a mere 5,774 km against the target of 12,000 km in the current financial year.
Nitin Gadkari, Minister for Road Transport and Highways inspected the section of the Ahmedabad- Dholera Expressway near Kavitha village on January 19, 2023. A direct connection to the Dholera Green Field Airport will be made possible by the road. The road connects Navagam's Dholera International Airport and Sardar Patel Ring Road, which are both close to the Dholera Special Investment Region, with Sarkhej. By offering people employment opportunities, the initiative will help boost regional economic growth. It will also support the growth of the tourism industry. The work on Ahmedabad-Dholera Expressway is likely to be completed by January 2024. The 109 km long Greenfield corridor is being developed at a total cost of Rs 4,200 crore.
This highway is expected to be 120 metres wide, of which 90 metres will be used for the motorway and the remaining 30 metres will be used for a future railway corridor. One can anticipate that this integration of the rail line with the motorway will eventually open the door for an RRTS corridor running from Ahmedabad to Bhavnagar via Dholera.
Considering the inspection of Ahmedabad- Dholera Expressway by Nitin Gadkari, India Tracker takes a look at the construction of national highways in the country.
According to the data released by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, the construction of highways till December 2022 has been a mere 5,774 km against the target of 12,000 km in the current financial year. The ministry has constructed 5,774 km of national highways up to December in FY 2022-23 as compared to 5,835 km constructed up to December 2021-22.
One of the major reasons behind the slowdown in the highway construction is being attributed to country’s prolonged monsoon season. Officials from the ministry and other field experts said that the prolonged monsoon has created a lot of hurdles in the construction. Giridhar Aramane, secretary, ministry of road transport and highways while commenting on the slowdown in the construction activity said that “The construction of new highways has been slow in the first six-month period. The same trend has been seen in the past three years. If we relate the current numbers with same period last year, we have almost reached 90 percent levels. Construction generally picks up pace in the second half of the year and we are confident of constructing 12,000 km of highways this year."
Aramane’s comments bring hopes about achieving the set target. But let us have a look at the basic mathematics here. The ministry has been able to construct 5,774 km national highways till December 2022. Simplifying this, it means that not even half of the target has been met in first nine months of the FY2022-23 as the target of highway construction in the current financial year is 12,000 km. Now, in order to achieve the target, the ministry has to undertake the completion of remaining 6,226 km till March 2023. This means that more than half of the construction in current financial year is still pending. But according to experts, 50 km of new roads must be built every day in order to accomplish the desired goal. The government has never succeeded in doing this in the past.
The chart below compares the construction of National Highways from April to December in 2021-22 and 2022-23.
Source: Ministry of Road Transport and Highways
There is a slowdown in the construction of national highway in the current financial year as compared to the previous one. Nitin Gadkari, the Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways, had stated in the monsoon session of the Rajya Sabha that India's road infrastructure will be equal to that of the United States by 2024. Citing instances of how the expressways will cut down on travel time, he had said that the travel time between major cities of India will be cut to less than half. He reiterated his statement recently at the 95th annual convention of Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industries (FICCI). He said that “We are making the world standard road infrastructure in the country and promising you that before the end of 2024, India’s road infrastructure will be equal to the standard of the USA.” But the data shows a different reality as the highway construction in India slows down.
