Bharatmala road and highways development

Bharatmala road and highways development
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India’s “Sagar mala” initiative along the coastal States also aims to promote port-led direct and indirect development and provide infrastructure to and from ports quickly, efficiently and cost-effectively.

The Road Transport and Highways ministry has taken up detailed review of national highways along coastline. Informing this in a written reply in the Lok Sabha on August 3, Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways Radhakrishnan said the review is being done with a view to developing road connectivity to border areas, development of coastal roads including road connectivity for non-major ports, improvement in the efficiency of national corridors, development of economic corridors, inter corridors and feeder routes along with integration with Sagar Mala under the proposed Bharat Mala Pariyojana.

India’s “Sagar mala” initiative along the coastal States also aims to promote port-led direct and indirect development and provide infrastructure to and from ports quickly, efficiently and cost-effectively. The “Bharat Mala” programme of India aims at developing robust and credible road links in the border areas to provide last-mile connectivity to major border points and trade routes connecting our neighbours.

Under the Bharat Mala project, the ministry has taken up detailed review of national highways (NHs) network with a view to improving 17,200-km road connectivity to coastal and border areas, backward areas, religious places, tourist places; construction, rehabilitation and widening of about 1,500 major bridges and 200 railway over bridges (ROBs), railway under bridges (RUBs) on NHs, improvement of newly declared NHs providing connectivity to district headquarters and connectivity improvement programme for Char-Dham (Kedarnath, Badrinath, Yamunothri and Gangothri in Uttarakhand).

The project will start from Gujarat and Rajasthan, move to Punjab and then cover the entire string of Himalayan states - Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand - and then portions of borders of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar alongside Terai, and move to West Bengal , Sikkim, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, and right up to the Indo-Myanmar border in Manipur and Mizoram. Estimates say government will have to construct some 5,300 km of new roads at an estimated cost of about Rs 12,000-14,000 crore for covering India's entire west-to-east land border.

You will be amazed to know that even after 60 years there are approx. 123 districts, that are about 20% districts of the country that are not connected with national highways. That is why a campaign has been launched under Bharat Mala project to connect these 123 districts of India with national highways at the earliest.

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