Highways built under Bharatmala Pariyojana near 20,000 km-mark: Gadkari

New Delhi, March 15 (IANS) Contracts for constructing highways across 26,425 km in the country have been awarded under Bharatmala Pariyojana, out of which 19,826 km have been completed so far, according to information tabled in the Lok Sabha. 

Bharatmala Pariyojana is envisaged to improve the logistics efficiency and connectivity in the country, including connectivity to tribal, aspirational and Left Wing Extremist-affected districts while reducing accidents on the highways, ensuring safer transportation networks, Minister of Road Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari informed the Lower House in a written reply, earlier this week.

As of February this year, 6,669 km length of high speed greenfield corridors have been awarded with construction completed for 4,610 km.

Many Smart Technologies such as Automated and Intelligent Machine-aided construction (AI-MC), LIDAR and drone-based analytics are being adopted in highway construction, the minister further stated.

The length of India’s National Highway network has surged by 60 per cent in the last 10 years from 91,287 km in 2014 to 146,195 km in 2024, making it the second-largest road network in the world, according to figures compiled by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH).

MoRTH plans to develop a network of 35 Multimodal Logistics Parks (MMLPs) as part of Bharatmala Pariyojana with a total investment of about Rs. 46,000 crore, which once operational, will be able to handle around 700 million metric tonnes of cargo. Of this, MMLPs at 15 prioritised locations will be developed with a total investment of about Rs. 22,000 crore.

These MMLPs will serve as regional cargo aggregation and distribution hubs for various industrial and agricultural nodes, consumer hubs and EXIM gateways such as seaports with multi-modal connectivity. In certain cases, the MMLPs are also being developed in tandem with the Inland Waterway Terminals under the Sagarmala Pariyojana to further reduce the cost of inland cargo movement at a much larger scale as compared to conventional road-based movement, the statement further explained.

To ensure adequate last-mile connectivity to all operational ports in country, MoRTH has developed a comprehensive Port Connectivity Masterplan for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade identifying connectivity requirements for which 59 critical infrastructure projects of length about 1,300 km have been selected for implementation, according to an official statement.