The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has achieved record 3,979 km of highways construction in the Fiscal 2019-20.
This was possible under the ambitious highways development programmes like Bharatmala Pariyojna. According to NHAI, this is the highest ever highway construction achieved in a financial year.
The previous fiscal (FY 2018-19) saw 3,380 km of Road construction. The government has envisaged an ambitious highway development programme – Bharatmala Pariyojana –which includes development of about 65,000 km national highways.
Under Phase-I of the programme, the government has approved implementation of 34,800 km of national highways projects with an ambitious target of 5 years with an outlay of Rs 5.35 lakh crore.
The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has been mandated development of about 27,500 km of national highways under Bharatmala Pariyojna Phase-I.
The NHAI has embarkes on large number of initiatives to accelerate the pace of highways construction which included revivingstalled projects, streamlining of land acquisition and acquisition of land prior to Bid invitation.
Besides, the steps included award of projects after adequate project preparation in terms of land acquisition, clearances etc, disposal of cases in respect of Change of Scope (CoS) and Extension of Time (EoT) in a time bound manner and close coordination with other Ministries and State Governments.
In addition, to expedite projects review at various levels and identification/ removal of bottlenecks in project execution was done besides securitisation of road sector loans.
Besides, the official said disputes resolution mechanism was revamped to avoid delays in completion of projects.
Earlier, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari had undertaken a series of meetings to sort out the issues behind delays in highways construction.