It will become the showpiece project for the BJP in the Madhya Pradesh election campaign. The Centre is planning a big-bang inauguration of the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway stretch in Madhya Pradesh, about 244 km-long, by Prime Minister Narendra Modi soon.
The Centre on Tuesday has invited tenders for appointing toll agencies for the seven toll plazas that will fall on the stretch, indicating that the expressway in Madhya Pradesh was complete and will be operational soon.
The 244-km stretch of the expressway in Madhya Pradesh will start from Neemthur on the Rajasthan border and end at Timarwani from where it will enter Gujarat. The expressway will cross Madhya Pradesh districts Mandsaur, Ratlam and Jhabua. The entire stretch in Madhya Pradesh is to be inaugurated in one go. The potential annual toll collection on the MP stretch of the expressway has been pegged at Rs 185 crore. The targeted completion date of this stretch in fact was April 30.
So far, only one section of the Delhi-Mumbai expressway — the Delhi-Dausa-Lalsot of 246 km, passing through Haryana and Rajasthan, — was inaugurated in February by the PM. The entire expressway from Delhi to Mumbai is 1,386-km-long and is expected to reduce the journey between the two major cities to just about 12 hours. The work in Madhya Pradesh has been done in nine packages. However, the already opened stretch of the expressway from Dausa to Lalsot would not be yet connected to the Madhya Pradesh stretch as the expressway is still under construction in parts of Rajasthan beyond Lalsot.
The targeted date for the completion of the entire expressway is June 2024 as pace is still to catch up in Gujarat and Maharashtra.
Another Expressway
The Prime Minister could also soon lay the foundation stone of another big expressway in Madhya Pradesh, the ‘Atal Progress-way’ or the Chambal Expressway, which will be a 404-km long Greenfield highway that will pass through the Gwalior-Chambal region of Madhya Pradesh while connecting Kota in Rajasthan to Etawah in Uttar Pradesh. The lion’s share of the 404-km long expressway, at 310 km, will pass through Madhya Pradesh, News18 has learnt.
The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) had recently invited bids to build the expressway after Madhya Pradesh Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia and Gwalior MP and Union Minister Narendra Singh Tomar had pushed for this project with the Road and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari. The project is expected to be completed in two years once the work starts. Passing through backward regions of Gwalior-Chambal like Morena and Sheopur in Madhya Pradesh, the expressway is expected to immensely benefit the people here.
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