Govt to set up Expressways Authority - Kamalnath

Highways Minister Kamal Nath on Monday said the government would decide in six months the modalities of the proposed Expressways Authority of India for building high-speed road network in the country. "Land acquisition is a major part of any kind of infrastructure project...its going to be another six months, states will have to decide on the alignment of roads, because the states have a larger roadmap," Nath said on the sidelines of a CII event.
Nath said that the government would constitute an authority for expressways on the pattern of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) in order to give impetus to infrastructure development in the country. Expressways should be looked at separately, he added. Government aims to build 7,000 km roads annually and has assigned the task of constructing 20 km of road per day to NHAI. The ministry has also envisaged constructing 15,600 km of national expressways network in three phases by 2022, the end of the 13th five-year plan (2017-22). Countries like US, Canada and other European nations have evinced interest in investing about USD 3 billion in highways projects over the next five years in India.