Even before completion, the partially opened Delhi-Mumbai expressway is the longest in India, surpassing all the existing e-ways in the country, official data analysed by News18 shows.
The ministry of road transport and highways (MoRTH) informed the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday that as of date, 11 national expressways and access-controlled highways of 2,138 km are operational in India, including the Delhi-Mumbai expressway.
“The master plan of national highways to improve the logistics with provision of expressway/high speed highways has been prepared by the Ministry under PM Gatishakti Framework using transportation model with analysis of data of e-way bills (GST), toll and traffic survey,” union minister Nitin Gadkari said in a reply to MP Madan Rathore.
The data dissected by News18 also showed that the 93-km-long Ahmedabad-Vadodara expressway in Gujarat was India’s first national expressway/access-controlled highway, started in 2004.
The next such road was the 96-km Delhi-Meerut expressway. It started operation in 2018-19. The 135-km Eastern Peripheral Expressway was the next one that started in 2021-22.
As of date, the operational length of the Delhi-Mumbai expressway is 619 km as per the ministry. This includes the Delhi-Dausa-Sawai Madhopur section, Jhalawar-Ratlam-MP/Gujarat Border, and the Vadodara-Bharuch section.
The total length of the project is 1,386 km. The entire 845-km Delhi-Vadodara section is expected to be ready by March 2025 while the 450-km Vadodara-Mumbai section is expected by October 2025.
Last month, News18 reported that two additional almost 200 km sections of the much-awaited Delhi-Mumbai expressway could be expected in the next six months.
Passing through and connecting Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, and Maharashtra, the Delhi-Mumbai expressway is being developed at a cost of about Rs 1 lakh crore. It is expected to halve the commute time between Delhi and Mumbai, from nearly 24 hours to 12 hours, and shorten the distance by 130 km.
The Amritsar-Bhatinda-Jamnagar expressway, also partially opened, is the next longest operational national e-way in India. Out of the total proposed length of 1,257 km, 540 km is operational.
Ambala-Kotputli, 313 km, is India’s third longest national e-way that started in 2022-23. The Indore-Hyderabad national expressway is next in line with 175 km operational.
The partly opened UER-II in Delhi is the shortest one in India with just nine kilometres operational. Delhi’s Dwarka expressway is second from the bottom with just a 19-km operational section.
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