As much as 418 km of national highway and State highway stretches in Kerala figures in the 6,005-km economic corridors, inter-corridors, feeder routes, and national corridors being developed to improve the efficiency of freight movement under the Bharatmala Pariyojana.
According to the NHAI, these corridors are proposed for development to at least four-lane access controlled (fully access control for economic corridors).
However, the DPR for access controlled six-laning and eight-laning may be required on certain stretches, depending on the traffic.
Keeping in view a futuristic approach, it has been decided that the land for any 4/6-lane highway road will be acquired with a right of way (RoW) of 60 m irrespective of the width of the carriageway.
INR 6.92 trillion has been allocated for building an 83,677 km road network over the next five years.
The largest ever outlay for road construction comes in the backdrop of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government implementing the goods and services tax (GST).
The road construction push includes the Bharatmala Pariyojana with a INR 5.35 trillion investment to construct 34,800km of roads.
In addition, INR 1.57 trillion will be spent on the construction of 48,877km of roads by the state-run National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) and the ministry of road transport and highways.
To expedite the Bharatmala projects, apart from ministry of road transport and highways and state-run firms-NHAI and National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd (NHIDCL)-even respective state public works departments (PWDs) will be roped in for timely execution.
This in turn will generate 142 million man-days of jobs, the government said.
Measures today will boost infra spending in a big way.
Funding Bharatmala- To fund the marquee Bharatmala scheme, INR 2.09 trillion will be raised as debt from the market, while iNR 1.06 trillion in private investments is being targeted through public private partnerships.
- In addition, INR 2.19 trillion will be provided from Central Road Fund (CRF), Toll-Operate-Maintain-Transfer (TOT) projects and toll collections of NHAI.
- Projects such as Sagarmala and Bharatmala will prepare a strong base for infrastructure development, enabling a person to travel across the country on a single road.
