Focus: GS-III Industry and Infrastructure, Prelims
Why in news?
Union Minister for Road Transport & Highways and MSMEs Shri Nitin Gadkari announced the development of a new Greenfield connectivity to Amritsar City from Nakodar on 2nd June, as part of Delhi-Amritsar Expressway.
Significance of this Delhi-Amritsar Expressway
- This greenfield alignment will not only provide shortest and alternate express connectivity to Amritsar city but also to other religious centres of Sultanpur Lodhi, Goindwal Sahib, Khadoor Sahib as well as the recently developed Dera Baba Nanak/Kartarpur Sahib International Corridor in Punjab.
- With this expressway, travel time from Amritsar to Delhi International airport would reduce to about four hours from the present about eight hours.
Bharatmala Project
Don’t Focus on Numbers
- Bharatmala Project is one of the biggest highway construction plan so far in the country, to develop approximately 83,677 km of roads at an investment of Rs 6.92 lakh crore by 2022.
- The programme includes the Bharatmala scheme, under which 34,800 km of highways would be constructed at the cost of Rs 5.35 lakh crore.
- Under Bharatmala, the road transport and highways ministry will construct 9,000 km of economic corridors across the country.
- The project also entails constructing 6,000 km long inter corridor and feeder routes, 2,000 km of border and international connectivity roads, 5,000 km to be upgraded under the national corridor efficiency programme, 800 km of greenfield expressways, 10,000 km under the national highway development programme and 2,000 km of coastal and port connectivity roads.
- Under the second phase of Bharatmala, the government has proposed to build nearly 3,000 km of expressways, including Aurangabad-Ahmadnagar-Pune, Varanasi-Ranchi-Kolkata, Indore-Mumbai, Bengaluru-Pune and Chennai-Trichy.
