Amid the pandemic and a delayed retreat of the monsoons, the annual highways construction target of 12,000 km for this fiscal is unlikely to be met, with the numbers set to less than that of 2020-21. Since April 1 last year to March 10 this year, around 8,278 km of highways have been constructed. By the end of February, the length of highways built stood at 8,045 km, a shortfall of almost 3,000 km when compared to the progress by this time last fiscal. In March, the pace so far has been around 23 km a day. Despite the pandemic and the lockdown in 2020, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways ended the financial year ending March 2021 on a high, having constructed 13,298 km of highways, or around 37 km a day — a record. Subsequently, the target was set at 40 km a day for the current year. However, midway into the year, with the pace not picking, the target was downsized to a realistic 12,000 km, or about 32 km per day. Ministry officials said that even that seems unattainable now. Current estimates are that this financial year is likely to end with around 10,500 km of highways, translating to around 28 km per day. This would take the highway construction progress to the levels of 2018-19, when India constructed 10,855 km of highways, or about 29.7 km a day. While both the second and the third waves of the pandemic occurred during this financial year, disrupting work for several days, policymakers in the ministry also blame the slow progress on the delayed retreat of the monsoon. “Rains started late and remained for more months than anticipated. That affected work for a good three-four months. That apart, the second wave of the pandemic, starting around mid-April and remaining until the second week of June, hampered our speed of construction,” Giridhar Aramane, Secretary, Road Transport and Highways, told The Indian Express. As a result, this fiscal brought in the dubious distinction of failing to surpass the previous year’s numbers for only the second time since 2013-14, when the country added 4,260 km of highways at a rate of 11.67 km a day. In 2019-20, India’s highways construction had missed its previous year’s figures by a whisker. That year, the construction figure stood at 10,237, which was just about 500 km less than the previous year’s 10,855. Aramane, however, said that despite the drop in pace this fiscal, key projects are on track. “We will be completing the Trans-Haryana Corridor, around 180 km of six-lane highways and around 350 km of the Delhi Mumbai Expressway. Besides, there will be progress in important projects like the Delhi-Dehradun corridor, the Chennai-Bengaluru corridor and others,” he said. While the rains slowed down construction, Aramane said it gave them a chance "to assess how good the quality of the contractors’ work is when faced with so much rainfall. We are happy to note that the quality has been good”. Undeterred by the setback in the progress this fiscal, the Union Budget has set a target of expanding the highways network by Rs 25,000 crore, which, ministry officials said, will be achieved over the next two fiscal years. In 2022-23, the Budget has allocated around 1.99 lakh crore, which is 52 per cent more than the Revised Estimates - the highest increase among all ministries.
