The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is looking to resume construction work by next week on 50-60% of the big-ticket highway projects that were stalled due the Covid-induced nationwide lockdown. Officials said work is likely to restart on highways and expressways where labour is stationed in camps at project sites.They said these projects may include the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway , which is likely to get permission from the local administrations in Haryana and Rajasthan by this week.The other corridors where work is expected to resume include the Amritsar-Jamnagar Expressway,Dwarka Expressway, and Trans Haryana North-South Expressway.“Around 50-60% of projects should resume next week onwards,” a government official told ET. “So far as availability of labour is concerned, we have them available at project sites.... steel plants, refineries are running, so there should be no concern on raw material.”Since some cement plants have stopped operations in the lockdown period, there can be a shortage going forward. But, the official said, there are enough stocks in the pipeline and on project sites for work to resume.Market watchers ET spoke with said the government must prioritise projects that are linked with industrial clusters to ensure efficient management of the supply chain.“Two key areas where the government should look at while restarting work on highway projects is, first, how economically important the project is and, second, whether labourers are present at the project site,” said Arindam Guha, partner and lead-government and public sector at Deloitte India.Once the cement manufacturing companies see an uptick in construction activity, they should also get back in action, and availability of raw material should not be a concern, Guha said.The guidelines issued by the home ministry on Wednesday allow work to resume on construction projects within the limits of municipal corporations and municipalities where workers are available on site and no workers are required to be brought in from outside.ET was the first to report on April 8 that the road construction sector was likely to get a breather, with the government planning to allow construction activity to resume at large project sites post April 14.The government is banking on infrastructure projects to kick-start the economic activity in the country.“We also need to see that contractors are lying idle, we will try and get a maximum number of projects going,” the official quoted above said.There is also an urgency to resume road construction work given that road repairs and construction can not be done during the monsoon season that lasts from June to September in the country.