Quality Construction Remains A Challenge, Amid Rapid Expansion

New Delhi: After constructing a record 56,700 km of National Highways (NHs) in the country in the last 10 years, the road transport and highways ministry will shift focus on quality of construction and maintenance of NHs in 2025.

The Ministry of Road Transport & Highways (MoRTH) is primarily responsible for development, operation and maintenance of NHs. Since 2013-14, the length of NHs has increased from 0.91 lakh km to 1.46 lakh km. New Highways Secretary V Umashankar has held several meetings to step up the quality of national highways construction and its maintenance.

Faced with criticism over poor quality of certain highways, such as Delhi-Jaipur (NH-48) and Amritsar-Jamnagar Economic corridor on social media, the ministry is set to take steps to improve the quality. Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari has repeatedly expressed frustration over poor quality of construction of some highways.

To enhance accountability and assess the quality of construction and maintenance of National Highways, state-owned National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) earlier this month intro-duced a comprehensive rating system for performance assessment of the concessionaires engaged in such works. A detailed methodology for rating the concessioners has been formulated by NHAI under which concessioners will be evaluated every six months and ratings will be uploaded on the NHAI website and its social media handles.

In 2025, the NHAI is aiming to set new benchmarks in quality construction and management of National Highways and provide a safer, smoother, and seamless travel experience to National Highway users. Construction of the much delayed Delhi-Mumbai Expressway, Delhi-Dehradun Expressway, and Bengaluru-Chennai Expressway is also likely to be completed in 2025.

The ministry is also likely to push a corridor-based highway infrastructure development approach focusing on ensuring consistent standards, user convenience and logistics efficiency, as compared to the earlier project-based development approach, focused on addressing stretches of local cogestion.

This corridor approach has already led to the identification of a network of 50,000 km of high-speed highway corridors through a scientific transport study based on GSTN and toll data to support India’s transformation into a USD 30-plus trillion economy by 2047.