Nitin Gadkari
New Delhi: Capital expenditure on National Highways has seen a significant increase from about Rs 51,000 crore in 2013-14 to more than Rs 2,40,000 crore in 2022-23, Parliament was informed on Thursday. In a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha, Union Road Transport and Highways minister Nitin Gadkari said budgetary allocation of the road ministry has increased from about Rs 31,130 crore in 2013-14 to Rs 2,70,435 crore in 2023-24.
Such increased budgetary allocation led to expansion of the National Highway (NH) network in the country from about 91,287 km in March 2014 to about 1,46,145 km at present, Gadkari added.
The minister said the length of four-lane-plus NH network, including high-speed corridors, has increased by more than 250 per cent from about 18,371 km in March 2014 to about 46,179 km so far.
Also, the length of less than two-lane NHs has decreased from about 27,517 km in March 2014 to about 14,870 km, which is now only about 10 per cent of the NH network, he added.
According to him, the ministry 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-Lalsot section (229 km) and entire section in Madhya Pradesh (210 km) of Delhi-Mumbai Expressway, Amritsar-Bhatinda-Jamnagar (470 km) in Rajasthan, Suryapet-Khammam section of Hyderabad-Visakhapatnam, Indore-Hyderabad (175 km), new Brahamputra Bridge near Tejpur in Assam on NH-37A(old), Kaladan Multi Modal Transit Transport Project in Mizoram, Shillong Nongstoin-Tura section of NH-44E & NH 127B in Meghalaya, he added.
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