India has 161,350km (100,260mi) of national highways as of March 2022 compared to 1,01,011km in FY 2013–14.[1][2][3] In July 2023, Union Road Transport and Highways MinisterNitin Gadkari said total length of the national highways in the country increased by about 59% in the last nine years.[1]
National highways constituted 2.7% of India's total road network, but carried about 40% of road traffic, as of 2013.[4] In 2016, the government vowed to double the highway length from 1,01,011 to 2,00,000km.[5]
The majority of existing highways are now four-lane roads (two lanes in each direction), though much of this is being expanded to six or more lanes. Some sections of the network are toll roads. Only a few highways are built with concrete. Bypasses have been constructed around larger towns and cities to provide uninterrupted passage for highway traffic. Some existing roads have been reclassified as national highways.
History
The National Highways Act, 1956[6] provided for public i.e. state investment in the building and maintenance of the highways.
In 1998 India launched a massive program of highway upgrades, called the National Highways Development Project (NHDP), in which the main north–south and east–west corridors and highways connecting the four metropolitan cities (Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata) have been fully paved and widened into four-lane highways. Some of the busier National Highway sectors in India were also converted to four- or six-lane limited-access highways.
National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited started functioning as of 18 July 2014.[7] It is a fully owned company of Government of India under Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and was created to develop, maintain and manage the national highways, strategic roads and other infrastructure of India. It was dedicated to the task of promoting regional connectivity in parts of the country which share international boundaries. It is responsible for the development, maintenance and management of National Highways in hilly terrain of North-East part of India, Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh and Uttarakhand. It works as a specialised agency in high altitude areas and border areas. Apart from highways, NHIDCL is constructing logictic hubs and transport related infrastructure e.g. multimodal transport hubs such as bus ports, container depots, automated multilevel car parking etc.
The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways adopted a new systematic numbering of National Highways in April 2010.[8] It is a systematic numbering scheme based on the orientation and the geographic location of the highway. The new system indicates the direction of National Highways whether they are east–west (odd numbers) or north–south (even numbers). It also indicates the geographical region where they are with even numbers increasing from east to west starting from NH2 and odd numbers increasing from north to south starting from NH1.[9]
Bharatmala, a centrally-sponsored and funded road and highways project of the Government of India[10] with a target of constructing 83,677km (51,994mi)[11] of new highways, was started in 2018. Phase I of the Bharatmala project involves the construction of 34,800km of highways (including the remaining projects under NHDP) at an estimated cost of ₹5.35 lakhcrore (US$64billion) by 2021–22.[12]
Expanding National Highway Network
The average speed of NH construction has also seen a significant increase, from a baseline of 12.1 km/day in 2014 rising to 28.3 km/day (143%).
The speed of highway construction reached 37 km per day in 2020-21, a record for fastest highway construction in India.[13]
National Highway of India in 2014, 91287km.
< 2 Lane, 27517km (30%)
2 Lane / 2 Lane + PS, 45399 Km (50%)
4 Lane, 18371 km (20%)
National Highway of India in 2023, 146145km.
< 2 Lane, 14870km (10%)
2 Lane / 2 Lane + PS, 85096 km (58%)
4 Lane, 46179km (32%)
Network length
Total length of national highways in India in km [14][15]
Note: Yearly data for 2018 and 2020 are not available.
State/union territory
2015
2016
2017
2019
2021
2022
2023
2024
Andaman and Nicobar Islands
331
331
331
331
331
Andhra Pradesh
4670
5465
6383
6912
7340
Arunachal Pradesh
2513
2513
2537
2537
2537
Assam
3784
3821
3845
3909
3936
Bihar
4701
4839
4839
5358
5421
Chandigarh
15
15
15
15
15
Chhattisgarh
3079
3078
3523
3605
3620
Delhi
80
80
79
157
157
Goa
262
262
293
293
299
Gujarat
4971
4971
5456
6635
7744
Haryana
2307
2622
2741
3166
3237
Himachal Pradesh
2466
2642
2643
2607
2607
Jammu and Kashmir
2593
2601
2601
2423
2423
Jharkhand
2632
2654
2661
3367
3367
Karnataka
6432
6503
6991
7335
7412
Kerala
1811
1812
1782
1782
1782
Madhya Pradesh
5184
5194
8053
8772
8941
Maharashtra
7048
7435
16239
17757
17931
Manipur
1746
1746
1746
1750
1750
Meghalaya
1204
1203
1204
1156
1156
Mizoram
1381
1381
1423
1423
1423
Nagaland
1080
1150
1547
1548
1548
Odisha
4645
4838
5413
5762
5897
Puducherry
64
64
64
27
64
Punjab
2239
2769
3228
3274
4099
Rajasthan
7886
7906
8972
10342
10350
Sikkim
309
463
463
463
709
Tamil Nadu
5006
4946
5918
6742
6858
Telangana
2687
2696
3786
3795
3974
Tripura
577
805
854
854
854
Uttar Pradesh
8483
8483
9017
11737
11831
Uttarakhand
2842
2714
2842
2949
3106
West Bengal
2910
2956
3004
3664
3665
All India
97991
101011
120493
132500
136440
Funding
National Highways Authority of India has enough funds to increase the pace of road building. At the listing ceremony of the National Highways Infra Trust's (NHAI InVITs) non-convertible debentures, the National Highway Infra Trust issued and listed Non-Convertible Debentures or NCDs worth Rs 1,500 crore on the Bombay Stock Exchange, with a long-dated maturity of 25 years.[23]
NHAI collected tolls worth Rs 34,742 crore on national highways in FY22.[24] Additionally NHAI toll revenue will to soar to Rs 1.40 lakh crores in next three years.[25]
Future
Brownfield National Highway Projects is an upgrading/widening of existing four lane highways into six lane highways which are not controlled access highways.[26]
The Golden Quadrilateral is a national highway network connecting several major industrial, agricultural and cultural centres of India. It forms a quadrilateral with all the four major metro cities of India forming the vertices, viz., Delhi (north), Kolkata (east), Mumbai (west) and Chennai (south). Other major cities connected by this network include Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Balasore, Bhadrak, Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Berhampur, Durgapur, Faridabad, Guntur, Gurugram, Jaipur, Kanpur, Pune, Kolhapur, Surat, Vijayawada, Eluru, Ajmer, Visakhapatnam, Bodhgaya, Varanasi, Prayagraj, Agra, Mathura, Dhanbad, Gandhinagar, Udaipur, and Vadodara. The main objective of these super highways is to reduce the travel time between the major cities of India, running roughly along the perimeter of the country. The North–South corridor linking Srinagar and Kanyakumari, and East–West corridor linking Silchar (Assam) and Porbandar (Gujarat) are additional projects. These highway projects are implemented by the National Highway Authority Of India (NHAI). At 5,846 kilometres (3,633 mi), it is the largest highway project in India and the fifth longest in the world. It is the first phase of the National Highways Development Project (NHDP), and consists of two, four, and six-lane express highways, built at a cost of ₹600 billion (US$7.2 billion). The project was planned in 1999, launched in 2001, and was completed in 7 January 2012.
The National Highways Authority of India or NHAI is an autonomous agency of the Government of India, set up in 1995 and is responsible for management of a road network of over 50,000 km of National highways out of 1,32,499 km in India. It is a nodal agency of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH). NHAI has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for satellite mapping of highways.
Roads in India are an important mode of transport in India. India has a network of over 6,331,791 kilometres (3,934,393 mi) of roads. It is the second-largest road network in the world, after the United States. At of roads per square kilometre of land, the quantitative density of India's road network is equal to that of Hong Kong, and substantially higher than the United States, China, Brazil and Russia. Adjusted for its large population, India has approximately 5.13 kilometres (3.19 mi) of roads per 1,000 people, which is much lower than United States 20.5 kilometres (12.7 mi) but higher than that of China 3.6 kilometres (2.2 mi). India's road network carries over 71% of its freight and about 85% of passenger traffic.
The National Highways Development Project (NHDP) was a project of four laning of existing national highways and six laning of selected major national highways of India. The project was started in 1998 under the leadership of Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. National Highways account for only about 2% of the total length of roads, but carry about 40% of the total traffic across the length and breadth of the country. This project is managed by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) under the Ministry of Road, Transport and Highways. The NHDP represents 49,260 km of roads and highways work and construction in order to boost economic development of the country. The government has planned to end the NHDP program in early 2018 and subsume the ongoing projects under a larger Bharatmala project.
Kerala, a state in Southern India, has a network of 11 National Highways, 72 State Highways and many district roads.
Nitin Jairam Gadkari is an Indian politician from Maharashtra who is serving as the 40th Minister of Road Transport & Highways in the Government of India since 2014. He is also the longest serving Minister for Road Transport & Highways, currently in his tenure for over ten years, and is the only person to serve under a single portfolio for three consecutive terms. Gadkari earlier served as the President of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from 2009 to 2013.
National Highway 44 is a major north–south National Highway in India and is the longest in the country.
Expressways are the highest class of roads in India. In July 2023, the total length of expressways in India was 5,930 km (3,680 mi), with 11,127.69 km (6,914.43 mi) under construction. These are controlled-access highways where entrance and exits are controlled by the use of cloverleaf, three-way, trumpet or grade separated interchanges that are incorporated into the design of the expressway and designed for maximum speed of 120 km/h, whereas National highways are flyover access or tolled, where entrance and exit is through the side of the flyover, at each intersection of highway with road, flyovers are provided to bypass the city/town/village traffic and these highways are designed for speed of 100 km/h. Some roads are not access-controlled expressways but are still named expressways, such as the Bagodara–Tarapur Expressway, Biju Expressway, these are actually state highways that are not declared by the central government as an Expressway, hence not an Expressway or National Highway.
The Eastern Peripheral Expressway (EPE) or Kundli–Ghaziabad–Palwal Expressway is a 135 km (84 mi) long, 6-lane wide expressway passing through the states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh in India. The expressway starts from the Western Peripheral Expressway at Kundli, Sonipat, passing through Baghpat, Ghaziabad and Noida districts in UP and Faridabad district in Haryana before rejoining the Western Peripheral Expressway near Dholagarh, Palwal. Eastern Peripheral Expressway along with Western Peripheral Expressway completes the largest Ring Road around Delhi. The Eastern Peripheral Expressway was declared as National Expressway 2 (NE-2) in March 2006.
In India, this is the network of roads maintained by the state governments. These roads are constructed and managed by the states' Public Works Department. The state highways are usually roads that link important cities, towns and district headquarters within the state and connect them with National Highways or state highways of neighbouring states.
The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) is a ministry of the Government of India, that is the apex body for formulation and administration of the rules, regulations and laws relating to road transport, transport research and in also to increase the mobility and efficiency of the road transport system in India. Through its officers of Central Engineering Services (Roads) cadre it is responsible for the development of National Highways of the country.
IRB Infrastructure Developers Limited, is an Indian highway construction company headed by Mr. Virendra Dattatraya Mhaiskar. It was incorporated in 1998, with its headquarters in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. It is part of the IRB Group and was ranked 200th in the Fortune India 500 list in 2020. IRB Infrastructure, which executed the country's first build-operate-transfer (BOT) road project, is one of the largest operators of such ventures. Currently it has about 3,404 lane Km operational and about 2,330 lane Km under development. Among its notable projects are the Mumbai-Pune Expressway and the Ahmedabad-Vadodara Expressway. In 2012, IRB acquired Tamil Nadu based BOT road builder MVR Infrastructure and Tollways for ₹130 crore. The company got the contract of Ganga Expressway, the longest under-construction expressway in Uttar Pradesh.
The Bangalore–Chennai Expressway, or National Expressway 7 (NE-7), is an under construction 258 km (160 mi) long, 4-lane wide access-controlled expressway between the cities of Bangalore, the capital of Karnataka and Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu. It will run from Hoskote in Bangalore Metropolitan Region Development Authority to Sriperumbudur in Chennai Metropolitan Area. It is planned to allow vehicles to reach 120 km/h (75 mph). The road was designated as a National Expressway on 1 January 2021. The total project value is ₹17,930 crore. The Expressway is expected to be completed before the end of 2025, despite earlier dates announced by the national Minister for Road Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari.
The Diamond Quadrilateral is a project of the Indian Railways to establish a high-speed rail network in India. The Diamond Quadrilateral will connect the four mega cities of India, viz. Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai, similar to the Golden Quadrilateral highway system.
Delhi–Meerut Expressway or National Expressway 3 is India's widest 96 km long controlled-access expressway, connecting Delhi with Meerut via Dasna in Ghaziabad in India. The 8 lanes old stretch of National Highway 9 (NH-9) up to Dasna is widened to 14 lanes. The fourth phase of the expressway is built on a new alignment from Dasna to Meerut – a six-lane stretch joining Meerut bypass. The 28 km (17 mi) stretch between Nizamuddin Bridge and Dasna is one of the most congested areas in the NCR. The total project cost is estimated to be between ₹8,000–10,000 crores.
The Bharatmala Pariyojna was a project in India implemented by Government of India. It was slated to interconnect 550 District Headquarters through a minimum 4-lane highway by raising the number of corridors to 50 and move 80% of freight traffic to National Highways by interconnecting 24 logistics parks, 66 inter-corridors (IC) of total 8,000 km (5,000 mi), 116 feeder routes (FR) of total 7,500 km (4,700 mi) and 7 northeast Multi-Modal waterway ports. The project also includes the development of tunnels, bridges, elevated corridors, flyovers, overpasses, interchanges, bypasses, ring roads, etc. to provide the shortest, jam-free & optimized connectivity to multiple places, it is a centrally-sponsored and funded Road and Highways project of the Government of India.
The Outer Ring Road is a 119 km under construction ring road around the city of Nagpur, in Maharashtra. A part of the road is between NH 44 and NH 56 towards east of the city of 62 km length is already operational. The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has issued work orders for execution of remaining stretch of 61 km. The value of work orders is Rs 1,170 crore making it the biggest ongoing road project in and around the city. After Pardi flyover, it would be second to be executed since city MP Nitin Gadkari became union minister for road transport and highways under which NHAI is functioning.
The Delhi–Mumbai Expressway is a 1,350 km long, 8-lane wide under-construction access-controlled expressway connecting India's national capital New Delhi to its financial capital Mumbai. The foundation stone for the project was laid by union minister of Road Transport & Highways Nitin Gadkari in the presence of Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley on 8 March 2019 and it was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The total project value including the land acquisition cost is around ₹1,00,000 crores . It is expected to be completed by October 2025.
The DND–Faridabad–KMP Expressway, formally known as NH-148NA is a 59 km long, 6-lane wide access-controlled expressway in Delhi NCR, India. It connects the junction of DND Flyway and Ring Road at Maharani Bagh in Delhi with KMP Expressway at Khalilpur, Nuh district in Haryana. The NH-148NA is a spur (branch) of Delhi–Mumbai Expressway project. This expressway will have an additional 31 km long spur from Sector-65, Faridabad bypass to Jewar Airport.
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