National Desk, 11th March: In a momentous development, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Haryana section of the Dwarka Expressway and laid the foundation stone for 112 National Highway projects across the country on Monday. These projects collectively hold an estimated value of around Rs 1 lakh crore.
The inauguration of the Haryana section of the Dwarka Expressway, a project with a budget of Rs 9,000 crore, marks a significant milestone nearly 18 years after its conception by the Haryana government. Designed to create an additional link between Delhi and Gurgaon, the first leg of this expressway is now operational, aiming to alleviate congestion on the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway and MG Road.
While the opening of the Dwarka Expressway is notable, the planning commission initially proposed three new link roads between Delhi and Gurgaon to address congestion. However, work on the other two links, Vasant Kunj to DLF-II and MG Road to Gurgaon-Faridabad Road, is yet to commence.
This development signifies the fifth expressway to become operational in the National Capital Region (NCR) in the past six years. Since 2018, two peripheral expressways – Eastern Peripheral Expressway (EPE), Western Peripheral Expressway (WPE), Delhi-Meerut Expressway, and the Sohna-Sawai Madhopur section of Delhi-Mumbai Expressway – have been opened to the public.
The first section of the Dwarka Expressway, a segment of the six-lane Urban Extension Road-II (UER-II) from Nangloi-Najafgarh Road to Sector 24 in Dwarka (9.6km), will also be opened for traffic on Monday. The Dwarka Expressway is a crucial component of the Centre’s Rs 60,000 crore highway development plan in the NCR, aimed at decongesting the capital. Built by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) as a ‘model’ urban expressway, it is designed to meet the region’s traffic requirements for the next 20-25 years.
Laying the foundation stone for the 28.5 km expressway on March 7, 2019, then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley highlighted the economic impact, stating that expressways would “boost the economy of the country as highways boosted the economy of the United States.”
In addition to the Dwarka Expressway inauguration, the Prime Minister inaugurated and laid the foundation stones for a total of 112 projects with a combined value of around Rs 1 lakh crore, according to a government statement.