News: Complete Dwarka Expressway by Sep, 2022: PM to road transport ministry-08-01-2021
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has directed the road transport and highways ministry to complete the 29-km Dwarka Expressway project by September, 2022.
The 8-lane access controlled expressway project came up for review in the last Pragati meeting chaired by the PM on December 30. According to the minutes of the meeting, the Delhi government and Delhi Transco Ltd have been instructed to complete the shifting of 220 KV underground cables by this May. Similarly, the housing and urban affairs ministry and DDA would complete the plantation by this April.
Sources in NHAI said two stretches of the project in Gurgaon totalling approximately 19 km would be completed by June this year. Other two stretches falling in Delhi with cumulative length of 10 km would be completed by September 2022. Work on Delhi stretches started late as forest clearance was awaited.
“The work is in progress in all stretches and there has been regular monitoring at the level of NHAI chairman,” an official said.
The expressway will take off from Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway at Shiv Murti in Mahipalpur and will terminate at Kherki Daula toll plaza. It will reduce traffic load on the existing expressway and also be an additional link from Delhi to Gurgaon.
The foundation stone for the expressway was laid by then finance minister Arun Jaitley, then external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and highways minister Nitin Gadkari in March, 2019.
The Dwarka Expressway was planned in 2006 by the Haryana government and contract awarded in 2011. But the work got delayed due to several hurdles in land acquisition and lack of coordination between Haryana and Delhi governments. In 2016, Gadkari had accepted the Haryana government’s request to declare the inter-state road as NH and he had announced NHAI would build the road.
