The ministry of road transport and highways is gearing to expand the scope of its flagship highways’ programme, Bharatmala Pariyojana, by bringing Special Accelerated Road Development Programme for North Eastern Region (SARDP NE) and areas affect by Left Wing Extremism (LWE) under its ambit.

According to sources, the union ministry is chalking out plans to push Bharatmala as a single programme to monitor all the construction work related to national highways.

“There is an understanding that the ministry will align everything with Bharatmala eventually in a procedural manner,” sources indicated.

Bharatmala Pariyojana is the flagship programme of Modi government for highways’ construction across the length and breadth of the country connecting border areas, coastal regions, pilgrimage sites and ports.

It will include construction of 66,100 km of highways in two phases (24,800 kilometer and 30,600 km each) with a total capital outlay of Rs 6.92 lakh crore.

Also read: First phase of Bharatmala Pariyojana to start by end of 2018: Gadkari

BMP has identified 26,200 km of economic corridors, 15,800 km of feeder roads, 13,100 km of national corridors, 5,200 km of border and international connectivity roads, 3,300 km of coastal roads and 1,800 km of expressways for construction.

Bharatmala originally included only National Highways Development Project (NHDP) under its ambit which was started by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in 1998. It included construction of national highways in seven phases including the Golden Quadrilateral and North-South East-West corridor. The total construction (including upgradation) target was 53,778 km.

Under the first phase of Bharatmala, approved by the cabinet committee in October, only 10,000 km of national highways will remain under NHDP, while rest has been subsumed under BMP.

Sources in the know said that SARDP NE and LWE will also be subsumed under Bharatmala gradually.

SARDP NE was initiated by the government to connect roads in the north eastern region with district headquarters and state capital. It envisages two/four laning of about 7,530 km of National Highways and two laning/improvement of about 2,611 km of state roads. As of 31 December 2016, 1,947 km of roads was constructed in the region.

United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in 2009 had decided to improve road connectivity in LWE areas by constructing 1,126 km of NHs and 4,351 km of state roads at a cost of Rs 7,300 crore across 34 districts.

The states included Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh. As of 31 December 2016, 4,166 kilometer of roads have been constructed under LWE programme.