The Centre on Wednesday approved seven highway projects covering 852 km at the cost of Rs16,000 crore. These projects have been in the pipeline for several years.
The projects include the Rs7,855-crore Delhi-Meerut Expressway that had being stuck for the past three years, Rs2,342 crore for four-laning of a bridge in Varanasi near India-Nepal border, four-laning of a 146-km stretch on the Sultanpur-Varanasi highway in Uttar Pradesh at the cost of Rs1,975 crore, four-laning of a 99-km stretch of the Yadgiri-Warangal section in Andhra Pradesh at Rs1,487 crore, Rs1,165 crore for Ambala-Kaithal highway in Haryana NH-65, two and four-laning of Bikaner-Falaudi section (NH-15), and four-laning of Kazhakotta-Mukkola stretch (NH-47).
A senior official of the Ministry for Road Transport and Highways said that these projects would be taken up on public-private partnership (PPP) mode and construction work would start as soon private players are roped in.“The biggest challenge is to get bidders. They have been shying away from putting money into the sector as it has not been lucrative for the past couple of years,” said an official of the Ministry.
The Delhi-Meerut Expressway, first conceived during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government, will involve widening as well as construction of a new alignment stretch to cut down the travel time between Delhi and Meerut to an hour.
Sources in the Ministry said that the stretch between Nizamuddin Bridge and Dasna in Ghaziabad (NH-24) will be converted into four lanes.