The Prime Minister's Office has asked the Road Transport and Highways Ministry to move a Cabinet note by next month for approval to the Rs 11,750-crore Delhi-Jaipur Expressway, the first such highway to be built by the central government.
"The Delhi-Jaipur Expressway is one of the announcements of the Prime Minister in November, 2013 which has been taken up as a priority project of the government. As on date, there is no expressway built by the central government and the Delhi-Jaipur Expressway would be the first," a PMO statement said.
An expressway is a controlled-access highway designed exclusively for high speed traffic.
The Road Ministry has estimated the project cost for the Delhi-Jaipur Expressway at Rs 11,750 crore, including land acquisition and pre-construction activities.
"The total road length will be 272 km. The Ministry plans to sign state support agreement by February 28 and the project would be awarded by September 2014 after completing all the intermediate steps," the statement said.
The Road Ministry has examined multiple financing options for the expressway and will proceed with the most viable one.
The Delhi-Jaipur Expressway can be replicated for all other expressways in the country, which are by and large parallel to existing NHs.
The Road Ministry in 2006-07 planned to construct 10 expressways but progress could be made only in two, namely Delhi-Jaipur and Delhi-Chandigarh.
The Delhi-Chandigarh expressway may now be re-aligned from Delhi to Ludhiana with a link to Chandigarh. This has been proposed mainly to cater to the heavy traffic on the Delhi-Ludhiana National Highway.
The government had accorded approval for building 1,000 km of expressways in the country in October, 2011.
The government earlier had announced to build seven expressways under the flagship highways building programme NHDP ( National Highway Development Programme) VI.
The remaining five projects are - 400 km Vadodara-Mumbai, 66 km Delhi-Meerut, Delhi-Agra, 277 km Bangalore-Chennai and 334 km Kolkata-Dhanbad.
