The Maharashtra government on Friday announced an expressway project to connect capital Mumbai with its second capital Nagpur.
Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis informed the state assembly that the 800-km long expressway will traverse from Mumbai through Ghoti-Aurangabad-Amravati and touch Nagpur in Vidarbha.
"The new expressway will cost around Rs.30,000 crore and will be completed by 2019," Fadnavis said.
It will slash the travel time from the current 15 hours to just 10 hours between Mumbai - India's commercial and glamour capital, and Nagpur - the orange capital, situated 860 km apart in central India.
This decision will benefit the people of Vidarbha, Marathwada and north Maharashtra, besides Mumbai, and was in line with the Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena government's efforts to take development to the remotest parts of the state, he added.
Like the Mumbai-Pune expressway, the new Mumbai-Nagpur expressway would also have controlled access - implying toll taxes - and in the first phase will have four lanes, which would be later increased to six lanes.
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"It will have other sophisticated features like an optical fibre network, CCTV, wifi coverage and other facilities making it a 'communication super expressway' in the real sense," Fadnavis said.
En-route, the government plans to set up IT parks, Smart Cities, educational complexes and other infrastructure which would benefit the local regions through which the route would pass.
The Mumbai-Nagpur expressway project will be taken up in two phases with land acquisition and four concrete lanes in the first phase.
In the second phase, six lanes along with related infrastructure, access, exit and connecting roads, tunnels, flyovers etc shall be completed.
Since this will be treated as a project of importance by the state it will seek partnership with the centre on financing and others aspects.