The Government of India launched “BharatMala Pariyojana”, a new umbrella program for the highways sector that focuses on optimizing efficiency of road traffic movement across the country by bridging critical infrastructure gaps.
The project covering a whopping 34800 kms of road would be completed in a phased manner.
The components of BharatMala Pariyojana are
- Development of Economic corridors – 9,000 Kms
- Inter-corridor & feeder roads – 6,000 Kms
- Improving the efficiency of National Corridors – 5,000 Kms
- Border & International connectivity roads – 2,000 Kms
- Coastal & port connectivity roads – 2,000 Kms
- Expressways – 800 Kms
- Balance of NHDP works – 10000 Kms
The BharatMala Project envisions to improve the efficiency of the National Corridor including the Golden-Quadrilateral and North, South –East West corridor by decongesting the choke points through construction of elevated corridors, bypasses, ring roads, and lane expansion and logistics parks at identified points.
The project plan includes construction of Border Roads of strategic importance along international boundaries and International Connectivity roads to promote trade with Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal.
The programme has identified around 26,200 km of Economic Corridors or routes that have heavy freight traffic.
The programme has planned to develop the identified Economic Corridors with heavy freight traffic, end to end to ensure seamless, speedy travel and uniformity in standards.
Feeder Corridors will be developed so as to address the infrastructure asymmetry that exists at many places.
All projects implemented under Bharatmala are to be technically, financially and economically appraised by an empowered Project Appraisal &Technical Scrutiny Committee to be setup in National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH).
Bharat Mala Route
The government will mobilize resources for Bharatmala through four different routes:
- Market borrowings
- Central road fund
- Monetizing government-owned road assets
- Budgetary allocation
