Delhi-Mumbai Expressway To Be Ready By 2023
The much-awaited Delhi-Mumbai Expressway is back in focus as the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in her Budget speech that the expressway would be completed by 2023. The FM has allotted an outlay of Rs 42,000 crore to the National Highway Authority of India for completing major highways and expressways which includes the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway.
Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari had laid the foundation stone of this Rs 90,000-crore mega project in March 2019. Those taking the road will be able to travel between national capital Delhi and financial capital Mumbai within 12 hours — it takes between 16 and 20 hours to do that currently.
While work has started only on some stretches of the highway, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) in December 2018 approved a plan to extend it to the Ring Road near the DND flyway in the national capital. For this, a six-lane 59-km access-controlled road from the Western Peripheral Expressway (WPE) near Sohna will be built, consequently bringing Manesar closer to Delhi.
The plan
The project, which is part of the Bharatmala Pariyojna, will be developed in four phases, of which, the work on first and the last stretch is already underway – Delhi to Jaipur and Vadodara to Mumbai.
The project will further open up two of the country’s most backward districts —Mewat in Haryana and Dahod in Gujarat, connecting these two with the expressway.
The final route will be Delhi-Gurugram-Mewat-Kota-Ratlam-Godhra-Vadodara-Surat-Dahisar-Mumbai.
Once operational, travelling by road between Delhi and Mumbai would be faster than the existing train connectivity which takes 16 hours minimum. It would be an access-controlled highway for which the maximum speed limit has been set at 150 kilometre per hour. The new route will reduce the total distance between the two metro cities by 106 km. The super expressway coming up between Delhi and Jaipur would also decongest the National Highway-8 and would end at Jaipur Ring Road, cutting the total travel time by four hours. While the total distance will be reduced by just 40 km, the increased permissible limit will reduce the total time taken for completing the journey.
The timeline
The authorities are already under the process of land acquisition for the Delhi-Jaipur stretch, which is scheduled to be completed soon. For the last stretch between Mumbai and Vadodara, the Centre has started awarding construction project at a tune of Rs 44,000 crore.
Other projects under Bharatmala
Gadkari has also announced other expressways that are recently approved, including Ahmedabad-Dholera, Delhi-Meerut, Kanpur-Lucknow, Chennai-Bengaluru and Delhi-Amritsar-Katra. The first phase of the Delhi-Meerut Expressway will be opened on April 15.