 "Atal Bihari Vajpayee")
Two of the biggest economic legacies of Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s tenure were his push for privatisation and highway construction.
The golden quadrilateral project linking Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai, followed by the North-South East-West, became the high point of the first NDA government. Vajpayee had stalwarts like Nitish Kumar and Rajnath Singh as Union surface transport minister when the ministry had both highways and maritime transportation under it. Road construction got into mission mode when little-known BC Khanduri, a retired army man from Uttrakhand who was close to Vajpayee, became highways minister.
The length of national highways increased to 58,125 km in
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