Budgetary allocation for road transport and highways has increased from about ₹31,130 Crore in 2013-14 to ₹3,00,019 Crore in 2024-25. Capital expenditure on National Highways (NHs) has been significantly increased from about ₹51,000 Crore in 2013-14 to ₹3.01 Lakh Crore in 2023-24. Infrastructure sector is the prime mover of the economy and contributes to the faster economic growth and development.

National Highways (NH) network length in the country has increased from 91,287 km in March, 2014 to 1,46,204 km at present, including the States of Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and North-eastern States.

With increased budgetary allocation over the years, quality of roads has improved substantially. Length of 4 lane and above NH network has increased by 2.5 times from about 18,371 km in 2014 to about 48,430 km. Also, proportion of less than 2-lane NHs has decreased from 30% to 9% of the total NH network. National High-Speed Corridors (HSCs) / Expressways in about 2,474 km length have already been operationalized. The above developments have increased the connectivity and accessibility to the NHs across the country and also increased the logistics efficiency.

Year-wise details of constructed NH length during the last ten years are as under:

The Government has completed various flagship projects or its sections which are already completed and opened to traffic to enable ease of movement. Some of these include Delhi - Dausa – Lalsaut-Sawai Madhopur section (293 km), Jhalawar-Jhabua section (251 km) and Vadodara-Bharuch section (87 km) of Delhi-Mumbai Expressway, entire Rajasthan and Gujarat sections of Amritsar-Bhatinda-Jamnagar (762 km), Dobaspet – Hoskote section of Bangalore Satellite Ring Road (80 km), Karnataka Section of Bangalore-Chennai Expressway (71 km), Suryapet – Khammam section of Hyderabad-Vishakhapatnam (59 km), Ambala - Kotputli Corridor (313 km), Haryana section of Delhi-Amritsar-Katra Expressway (120 km), Dwarka Expressway (19 km), new Brahmaputra Bridge on NH-715 and Jia Bharali Bridge on NH-15 near Tejpur in Assam, Kaladan Multi Modal Transit Transport Project in Mizoram, etc.

Also, several flagship corridors e.g. Vadodara - Mumbai Section of Delhi – Mumbai Expressway, Delhi-Saharanpur-Dehradun Corridor, Bengaluru - Chennai Expressway (remaining sections), Bengaluru Ring Road (remaining sections), Solapur-Kurnool-Chennai Corridor, Ahmedabad-Dholera Expressway, Raipur – Vishakhapatnam Economic Corridor, Char Dham Projects in Uttarakhand, Dhubri – Phulbari Bridge over river Brahmaputra in Assam, Aizol-Tupiang in Mizoram, etc., are under construction.

This reply was given by the Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways, Shri Nitin Gadkari in a written statement to an unstarred question in the Rajya Sabha, today.

 

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