The National Highways Development Project (NHDP) is a project to upgrade, rehabilitate and widen major highways in

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

to a higher standard. The project was started in 1998 under the leadership of

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is ...

Atal Bihari Vajpayee Atal Bihari Vajpayee (; 25 December 1924 – 16 August 2018) was an Indian politician who served three terms as the 10th prime minister of India, first for a term of 13 days in 1996, then for a period of 13 months fr ...

National Highways National Highways, formerly the Highways Agency and later Highways England, is a government-owned company charged with operating, maintaining and improving motorways and major A roads in England. It also sets highways standards used by all f ...

account for only about 2% of the total length of roads, but carry about 40% of the total traffic across the length and breadth of the country. This project is managed by the

National Highways Authority of India The National Highways Authority of India or NHAI (Hindi: भारतीय राष्ट्रीय राजमार्ग प्राधिकरण) is an autonomous agency of the Government of India, set up in 1995 (Act 1988) and i ...

(NHAI) under the Ministry of Road, Transport and Highways. The NHDP represents 49,260 km of roads and highways work and construction in order to boost economic development of the country. The government has planned to end the NHDP program in early 2018 and subsume the ongoing projects under a larger

Bharatmala The Bharatmala Pariyojna ( 'India garland project') is an ecosystem of road development which includes development of tunnels, bridges, elevated corridors, flyovers, overpass, interchanges, bypasses, ring roads etc. to provide shortest, jam f ...

project.

Project Phases

The project is composed of the following phases: * Phase I: The

Golden Quadrilateral The Golden Quadrilateral ( hi, स्वर्णिम चतुर्भुज, Svarnim Chaturbhuj; abbreviated GQ) is a national highway network connecting several major industrial, agricultural and cultural centres of India. It forms a ...

(GQ; 5,846 km) connecting the four major cities of

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the secon ...

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

and

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

. This project, connecting four metro cities, is . Total cost of the project is Rs.300 billion (US$6.8 billion), funded largely by the government’s special petroleum product tax revenues and government borrowing. In January 2012, India announced the four-lane GQ highway network as complete. * Phase II: North-South and East-West corridors comprising national highways connecting four extreme points of the country. The

North–South and East–West Corridor The North–South–East–West Corridor (NS-EW) is the largest ongoing highway project in India. It is the second phase of the National Highways Development Project (NHDP), and consists of building 7300 kilometers of four/six lane highways a ...

(NS-EW; 7,142 km) connecting

Srinagar Srinagar (English: , ) is the largest city and the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, India. It lies in the Kashmir Valley on the banks of the Jhelum River, a tributary of the Indus, and Dal and Anchar lakes. The city is known for its ...

in the north to

Kanyakumari Kanniyakumari (; , referring to Devi Kanya Kumari), also known as Cape Comorin, is a city in Kanniyakumari district in the state of Tamil Nadu, India. It is the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent and the southernmost city in mainland Ind ...

in the south, including spur from Salem to

(Via

Coimbatore Coimbatore, also spelt as Koyamputhur (), sometimes shortened as Kovai (), is one of the major metropolitan cities in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is located on the banks of the Noyyal River and surrounded by the Western Ghats. Coimbat ...

and

Kochi Kochi (), also known as Cochin ( ) ( the official name until 1996) is a major port city on the Malabar Coast of India bordering the Laccadive Sea, which is a part of the Arabian Sea. It is part of the district of Ernakulam in the state of ...

) and

Silchar Silchar is a city and the headquarters of the Cachar district of the state of Assam, India. It is located south east of Guwahati. It was founded by Captain Thomas Fisher in 1832 when he shifted the headquarters of Cachar to Janiganj in Silchar. ...

in the east to

Porbandar Porbandar is a city in the Indian state of Gujarat, perhaps best known for being the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi and Sudama. It is the administrative center of the Porbandar District and it was the former capital of the Porbandar princel ...

in the west. Total length of the network is . As of 31 October 2016, 90.99% of the project had been completed, 5.47% of the project work is under Implementation and 3.52% of the total length is left. It also includes Port connectivity and other projects — . The final completion date to 28 February 2009 at a cost of Rs.350 billion (US$8 billion), with funding similar to Phase I. * Phase III: The government on 12 April 2007 approved NHDP-III to upgrade of national highways on a Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) basis, which takes into account high-density traffic, connectivity of state capitals via NHDP Phase I and II, and connectivity to centres of economic importance. * Phase IV: The government on 18 June 2008 approved widening of highway that were not part of Phase I, II, or III. Phase IV will convert existing single-lane highways into two lanes with paved shoulders. * Phase V: As road traffic increases over time, a number of four-lane highways will need to be upgraded/expanded to six lanes. On 5 October 2006 the government approved for upgrade of about of four-lane roads. * Phase VI: The government is working on constructing

expressways Expressway may refer to: * Controlled-access highway, the highest-grade type of highway with access ramps, lane markings, etc., for high-speed traffic. *Limited-access road A limited-access road, known by various terms worldwide, including limi ...

that would connect major commercial and industrial townships. It has already identified of Vadodara (earlier Baroda)-Mumbai section that would connect to the existing Vadodara (earlier Baroda)-Ahmedabad section. The

World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Inte ...

is studying this project. The project will be funded on BOT basis. The Expressway between

—

Bangalore Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...

and Expressway between

— Dhanbad has been identified and feasibility study and DPR contract has been awarded by NHAI. * Phase VII: This phase calls for improvements to city road networks by adding ring roads to enable easier connectivity with national highways to important cities. In addition, improvements will be made to stretches of national highways that require additional flyovers and bypasses given population and housing growth along the highways and increasing traffic. The government has planned to invest Rs. 16,680 Cr for this phase. The long Chennai Port—

Maduravoyal Maduravoyal is a residential neighbourhood located in the west of Chennai, India. As of 2011, the town had a population of 86,195. Maduravoyal also has a name as "ettam kal" (8th mile), so it could be famous in British Period too, it is exac ...

Elevated Expressway is being executed under this phase. Note: 1 crore= 10 million

Status from NHAI website

National Highways Development Project is being implemented in all phases. The present phases are improving more than 49,260 km of arterial routes of NH network to international standards. The project-wise details of NHDP all phases is below as of 18 May 2021:

Subsummation in Bharatmala project

National Highway Development Project will close by first half of 2018, with the launch of

project. 10,000 km of highway construction left under NHDP will be merged with Phase I of the Bharatmala.

References

External links

"Rs. 3.2 trillion for infrastructure in 11th plan"
- India e-News article, dated 6 July 2006.
NHAI Project Photographs

India Highways Group with many pictures

— extremely detailed

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

article, dated 4 December 2005 (''free registration required'')
National Highways Development Project: Get The Facts 2014NHAI list Rs.30bn masala bond on Singapore Exchange (SGX) to boost infrastructure development fund
{{Transport in India Roads in India Deveolpment Project-NHDP Proposed road infrastructure in India Ministry of Road Transport and Highways

Project Phases

Status from NHAI website

Subsummation in Bharatmala project

See also

References

External links