Delhi-Mumbai Expressway Construction To Begin From December 2018, Says Nitin Gadkari

Construction for the proposed Delhi-Mumbai expressway will be completed within three years with construction to begin in December this year, said Union road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari, according to a report by PTI. The ambitious project that was announced in April this year will be built at a cost of ₹ 1 trillion connecting the two major cities of the country. The expressway will cut the travel time by half between Delhi and Mumbai with the average time down from 24 hours to 12 hours for cars, and from 44 hours to 22 hours for trucks. The distance too will be reduced to 1250 km from 1450 km, the union minister said. Work will begin in 40 different locations simultaneously to aid faster construction.

"We will begin the work on the Rs 1 trillion Delhi-Mumbai expressway from end-December and it will be completed within 30-36 months. Money is not a problem at all. NHAI can raise plenty of cheap money from the market," Gadkari said.

According to the original proposal, the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway was to run parallely to the existing National Highway-8 (NH-8) but the alignment was later changed due to high land acquisition cost, Gadkari revealed. The new route will see the expressway run more eastwards, starting from Gurugram on the outskirts of Delhi and moving towards Alwar, the tribal district of Jhabua and Ratlam in western Madhya Pradesh. The expressway will then move towards Baroda in Gujarat, as per the minister.

"The expressway will stretch across the states covering two of the nation's most backward districts, Mewat in Haryana and Dahod in Gujarat. The whole route will be: Delhi-Gurugram-Mewat-Kota-Ratlam-Godhra-Vadodara-Surat-Dahisar -Mumbai," he said.

The report further says that the government saved over ₹ 16,000 crore over land acquisition cost. While an acre was priced at ₹ 7 crore as per the original alignment, the new alignment has reduced the cost to ₹ 80 lakh per hectare, Gadkari said. The land cost itself is said to be around ₹ 6000 crore.

Gadkari further explained that the objective behind the massive project is to decongest Delhi-NCR as the truck traffic will now pass through the outskirts of the city. About three lakh vehicles ply daily on the NH-8, which will be benefitted by the new expressway.