Nitin Gadkari, the Union Minister for Highways and Road Transport, said on Thursday that the Dwarka Expressway, a crucial highway that will enable seamless connectivity between Mahipalpur in Delhi and Kherki Daula in Gurugram, will be finished by the end of December.
This highway is the nation’s first access-controlled eight-lane expressway, is a component of the INR 60,000-crore Delhi decongestion plan, which intends to lessen traffic mayhem and pollution in the National Capital Region (NCR).
Gadkari stated that the road segments in Gurugram would be completed over the next three months and that the entire route will be open to traffic by the end of this year’s December. He stated that the project will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The highway is anticipated to boost growth and ensure seamless connectivity to the Dwarka region, where a host of projects, including the international convention center and state-of-the-art sports complexes and stadium, are coming up. It also serves as an alternate route between Delhi and Gurugram and relieves traffic on the Delhi Gurugram Expressway (NH48).
Lieutenant Governor of Delhi VK Saxena, Union Minister of State General (Retd) V K Singh, Union Minister of State Rao Inderjit Singh, MPs Pravesh Verma and Ramesh Bidhuri, and top National Highways Authority of India officials were in attendance with Gadkari.
There are four packages being built for the highway. 18.9 km of the 29 km overall length are in Haryana, and the remaining 10.1 km are in Delhi. According to a senior NHAI official, the Haryana government first thought of the highway project in 2006, but it was stalled by legal and land acquisition concerns until 2016, when the Union government agreed to take up the project at the state government’s request.
The project’s development began in 2018. The official stated that although the route was supposed to be finished in 2021, timelines have to be postponed because of the Covid epidemic.
When queried about the closure of the Kherki Daula toll plaza, the minister said that the NHAI was developing a GPS-based toll collecting system that would eliminate traffic and ensure that travelers only paid for the portion of the highway they had really utilized. But he made it plain that toll collection on the Delhi-Jaipur route will continue as long as resources are needed to keep the roads in good condition.
Gadkari also discussed the four packages in which the project is being built and their development. He said that the first package, which starts at Shiv Murti in Mahipalpur and continues up to the Sector 21 road underbridge in Bijwasan, has had 61% of its work finished. At Mahipalpur, a vital stack interchange is being created, ensuring that traffic between Delhi, Gurugram, the Delhi airport, and the Dwarka expressway can flow smoothly.
The second package, which runs from Bijwasan to the Delhi-Haryana border, is 82% complete. This will feature a toll plaza, according to Gadkari.
As contractors finish up the road length, the third package between the Haryana border and Basai Dhankot is 94% finished, he continued. According to the minister, the fourth and final package between Basai Road and Kherki Daula is nearly complete.
Source : India times
