Govt maps sustainable route to highway building: Gadkari

The Union government is emphasizing sustainable construction models and practices in line with its push for infrastructure growth in the country, said Nitin Gadkari, union minister for road transport and highways. Addressing the Mint Sustainability Summit 2023 in New Delhi on 23 August, the minister said the government has been pushing for sustainable construction of roads and highways in a bid to protect the ecology, and not just for the transition to green mobility.

Outlining the achievements of the NDA government, he said that the country has added around 86,000 km to its national highway network since 2014. The minister added that currently the national highway network of India is the second largest in the world at over 1.46 lakh km, after the US.

Gadkari mentioned that the government has adopted the use of fly ash, rubberized bitumen, polymer-modified bitumen and steel slack in the construction of roads in the country. Further, as part of the Green Highway Policy 2015, he said a total of about 3.8 crore trees have been planted so far along the national highways.

“Now we are going to develop a special contractor for transplantation of trees and that is very important for protecting our ecology and environment,” the minister said. The road transport minister reiterated his stand for the use of ethanol, methanol, bio-diesel and bio-CNG for mobility in his address.

In a bid to lower fatalities, he mentioned the initiative to use bamboo crash barriers along highways. “For the first time in the world, we have installed bamboo crash barriers on a 200-metre-long section on Vani-Warora (highway), in Maharashtra. It passed all the trials and tests taken by the institute in Indore.” The highway connects the Chandrapur and Yavatmal districts in Maharashtra. He was of the view that the use of bamboo also offers an alternative to steel and addresses environmental concerns.

On the policy to mandate minimum use of 25% precast components in national highways, expressways and centrally sponsored infrastructure projects, he said the initiative would lead to saving of both cost and time, along with ensuring the usage of high-quality raw material.

He also outlined plans to boost infrastructure in the national capital and making the roads here dust-free. The minister said that the government has come up with a ₹65,000-crore ‘Delhi Decongestion Plan’, out of which work of nearly ₹25,000 crore is completed, while the rest is in progress. Further, projects worth nearly ₹6,000 crore would be taken up soon.

The plan involves a total of 16 projects, including the Dwarka Expressway, where 80% of the work is complete, he said. He also said an additional ₹1,500 crore may be provided to make roads in the national capital dust-free, and to improve the landscape and drainage systems around the road infrastructure.

The plans come against the backdrop of several instances of water logging in the national capital after heavy rains this year.

Further, amid criticism over the recent report of the comptroller and auditor general (CAG), which showed cost overrun in the construction of the Dwarka Expressway, Gadkari asserted that the project did not experience any cost overrun or corruption.

The recent CAG report created a political row after it flagged a huge cost overrun in the construction of the Dwarka Expressway. According to the report, the expressway, which spans 29.06 km, is being built at a cost of ₹250.77 crore per km, against the estimated ₹18.2 crore per km that was sanctioned by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA).

Claiming that no one can blame him for corruption of even a small amount, Gadkari said if found guilty, he is ready to get punished. “We are transparent, time-bound, result-oriented, quality-conscious and corruption-free,” he emphasized.