3,839km of Maharashtra's highways part of National Highway project

State minister of co-operation, marketing and textiles and public works Chandrakant Patil has announced that a total of 3,839km of state highways has been included in the National Highway (NH) project, and that includes Mumbai-Vadodara six-lane highway along with Satara-Kagal highway and Mumbai-Goa highway, among others.

After a meeting with Union minister of road transport and highway Nitin Gadkari, Patil informed the media that the orders have been issued for survey of the Mumbai-Goa highway along the coastline. He informed that a provision of Rs2,000 crore has already been made for the project.

Patil added that the Satara-Kagal higway will be handled by the MSRDC. As far as the Mumbai-Vadodara six-lane highway is concerned, the work to prepare a detailed project report will start immediately, he said.

"The Centre and the state government have gone for a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to complete the six-lane Mumbai-Nagpur project and the Union government has prepared a plan for this project, estimated at Rs32,000 crore," said Patil.

He informed that the Panvel-Indapur stretch, a project pending for a long time, will also be completed now. He said MSRDC minister Eknath Shinde was also invited for the meeting with Gadkari in New Delhi, but he was busy with the Kalyan-Dombivli developments, for the election of the mayor.

Earlier, Gadkari had shared with the media that by January, bids to resume remaining works for four-laning of Mumbai-Goa highway will be floated by the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI). "We will improve the existing road and there will be changes in the alignment, curves and gradients at some sections," said Gadkari.

The entire highway will be a cement concrete road. At the moment, 60 per cent of the land acquisition along the highway has been undertaken and NHAI is hopeful to acquire the balance land parcels in the coming months. "We cannot carry out the project unless 80 per cent of the acquisition is done," added Gadkari.

The estimated cost for four -laning of the 455-km highway is around Rs4,000 crore and there is a possibility of a revision. The project will be undertaken on the earlier Engineering Procurement and Construction financial model, by way of four packages or tenders.

Similarly, tenders for Mumbai-Goa highway are likely to be invited from December onwards. A decision, however, is yet to be arrived at on the financial model that will be adopted to implement the widening project with several bridges, which has an estimated cost of around Rs12,000-15,000 crore.