India Confident of 13,814km Highway Construction Target

New Delhi, Jan 5 (PTI) The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) is confident of achieving the highway construction target of 13,814 kilometres for the current fiscal, its secretary Anurag Jain said on Friday.

Addressing a press conference, Jain further said the total length of national highways in India increased 60 per cent to 1,46,145 km till December 2023 from 91,287 km in 2014, since the Narendra Modi government came into power.

"The pace of highway construction in 2023-24 so far has been better than last year, and we are confident of achieving the 13,814-km highway construction target during the current fiscal," he said.

During April-December 2023, the ministry built 6,217 km of the national highway, higher than the 5,774 km a year ago.

According to him, the government is planning to award 10,000 km of national highway projects in 2023-24.

The ministry has constructed 10,237 kilometres in 2019-20, 13,327 kilometres in 2020-21, 10,457 kilometres in 2021-22 and 10,331 kilometres in 2022-23.

Jain also said the government has asked companies to prepare detailed project reports (DPR) for unawarded identified projects to increase the pace of awarding in 2023-24.

He said the total length of four lanes and above national highways (NHs) increased by 2.5 times to 46,179 km in December 2023 from 18,387 km in 2014.

While the total length of high-speed corridors in 2014 was 353 km, which increased to 3,913 km in 2023, the total length of less than two-lane national highways decreased from 30 per cent (2014) to 10 per cent of the national highway network in 2023.

Jain noted that expenditure on the ministry's highway construction is expected to increase by 9.4 times to Rs 3.17 lakh crore in 2023 from 2014.

He also said under the Vehicle Scrapping Policy, 44 registered vehicle scrapping facilities (RVSFs) are operational in India, while concession and motor vehicle tax were announced by 19 states/ Union Territories.

As many as 49,770 vehicles were scrapped to date under the Vehicle Scrapping Policy, he added.

Jain said state-owned NHAI has collected Rs 18,450 crore as toll till December in the current financial year.

The government will introduce new technologies, including GPS-based toll collection systems, by March next year to replace existing highway toll plazas, he added.

Jain also said that construction of the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway is expected to be completed by December 2024.