| Country: | India |
| Ministry: | Ministry of Road Transport and Highways |
| Current Status: | Active |
The Bharatmala Pariyojna ('India garland project') is an ongoing project that will interconnect 550 District Headquarters (from current 300) through a minimum 4-lane highway by raising the number of corridors to 50 (from current 6) and move 80% freight traffic (40% currently) to National Highways by interconnecting 24 logistics parks, 66 inter-corridors (IC) of total, 116 feeder routes (FR) of total and 7 north east Multi-Modal waterway ports. The project also includes development of tunnels, bridges, elevated corridors, flyovers, overpass, interchanges, bypasses, ring roads etc. to provide shortest, jam free & optimized connectivity to multiple places, it is a centrally-sponsored and funded Road and Highways project of the Government of India. This ambitious umbrella programme will subsume all existing Highway Projects including the flagship National Highways Development Project (NHDP), launched by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in 1998. Bharatmala is mainly focused on connecting remote areas and satellite cities of megacities such as Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad etc. The total investment for committed new highways is estimated at, making it the single largest outlay for a government road construction scheme (as of March 2022). The project will build highways from Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana and then cover the entire string of Himalayan territories - Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand - and then portions of borders of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar alongside Terai, and move to West Bengal, Sikkim, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, and right up to the Indo-Myanmar border in Manipur and Mizoram. Special emphasis will be given on providing connectivity to far-flung border and rural areas including the tribal and backward areas.[1]
Other than NHDP related projects which are greenfield, there is Brownfield National Highway Projects which is a upgradation/widening of existing 4 lane highways into 6 lane highways which are not controlled access highways.[2] Many state highways have been converted to National Highways under this project.[3]
It is both enabler and beneficiary of other key Government of India schemes, such as Industrial corridor, Make in India, Startup India, Standup India, Setu Bharatam, Sagarmala, Dedicated Freight Corridors(DFC), UDAN-RCS, Digital India, BharatNet, Parvatmala.
India's 6,215,797 km (3,862,317 mi) road network is second largest in the world, of which only 2% (~1,60,000 km) are national highways (NHs) carrying 40% road traffic.[4] Bharatmala phase-I will raise the NH connection to a total of 80% or 550 districts out of total 718 districts[5] from the current 42% or 300 districts connected to NH (dec 2017).[4] Mapping of Shortest Route for 12,000 routes carrying 90% of the India's freight, commodity-wise survey of freight movement across 600 districts, automated traffic surveys over 1,500+ points across the country, and satellite mapping of corridors was done to identify upgradation requirements for Bharatmala.
National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited was created in 2014 as a fully owned company of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways by the Government of India to expedite construction of National Highway projects with specific focus on Northeast India.[6] [7]
Central Road Fund (CRF) was created as a non-lapsable fund under the "Central Road Fund Act 2000", by imposing a cess on petrol and diesel, to build and upgrade National Highways, State roads, rural roads, railway under/over bridges etc., and national waterways.[8]
Bharatmala will significantly boost highway infrastructure:
NHDP project covers, including completed, under construction and left for award (as of May 2017).[9] The uncompleted projects under NHDP will also be subsumed in Bharatmala. NHDP was meant to convert dirt roads into National Highways or any 1/2 lane roads into 4 lane national highways.
National Corridors of India (NC) are 6 high volume corridors, including 4 in Golden Quadrilateral and 2 in North–South and East–West Corridors, including Mumbai - Kolkata Highway (NH6), known as East Coast - West Coast Corridor, that carry 35% of India's freight.[4] Lane expansion to 6 to 8 laning, ring roads, bypasses and elevated corridors will be built in Bharatmala to decongest the National Corridors.[4] Logistics Parks will be set up along the NC.[4] Busiest stretches of National Corridors will be converted to the expressways.[4] inter-corridor and feeder routes will be built.[4] Additionally, of border roads and international highways will be built to connect 6 National Corridors to international trade routes.[4]
National Corridors Efficiency Program (NCEP) entails phase-I decongestion of 185 choke points by 34 6-8 laning, 45 bypasses and 30 ring roads of 6 NC.[4] [10]
New ring roads in Bharatmala include:
Economic Corridors of India or Industrial Corridors of India, 44 corridors were identified and will be taken up in phase-I, they exclude 6 National Corridors, they include:[11] 66 inter-corridors (IC) & 116 feeder routes (FR) were identified for Bharatmala.[11] [4]
List of 44 economic corridors (EC):[11]
Logistics parks entailing 45% of India's freight traffic have been identified to be connected by Bharatmala economic corridors (EC), to develop hub-and-spoke model where hub-to-hub transport can be done with 30 tonne trucks and hub-to-spoke transport can be done with 10 tonne trucks. Currently all transport is point-to-point in 10 tonne trucks (2017).[11] [10]
North East Economic corridor will connect 7 state capitals and 7 multimodal waterways terminals on Brahmaputraon the bharatmala route (slide 21).[11]
Look-East Connectivity will be further developed in the Bharatmala routes (slide 22).[11]
The plan envisages the construction of roads, including of additional highways and roads across the country, apart from an existing plan of building of new highways by the National Highway Authority of India.[13] Bharatmala has synergy with Sagarmala.
The total length of highways will be constructed under phase-I by December 2022, including of new highways and another currently under-construction remaining incomplete under NHDP, compared to 19 years it took to upgrade almost same length of National Highways under NHDP.[14] [15] [16]
| Road Type | Total Length | Phase-I Length | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Economic Corridors | 44 EC corridors exclude 6 NC. | |||
| Inter-corridor & feeder Routes | 66 inter-corridors (IC) & 116 feeder routes (FR). | |||
| National Corridors Efficiency Program | 6-8 laning, bypasses and ring roads of 6 NC. | |||
| Border & International connectivity roads | of border roads and to connect 6 national corridors to international trade routes, such as BIMSTEC, MIT and BIN (Bangladesh-India-Nepal). | |||
| Coastal & Port connectivity roads | Synergy with Sagarmala. | |||
| Expressways | NC stretches converted to expressway. | |||
| Total under Bharatmala Pariyojana | ||||
| NH remaining under NHDP | ||||
| Total to be built or upgraded |
Multimodal logistics parks. It will make current corridors more effective & will improve connectivity with north east and leverage synergy with inland waterways.
Multi-modal logistics parks will provide seamless cargo transfer between Railways cargo, Inland Waterways, Air cargo, Dedicated Freight Corridors, Access-Controlled Expressways, National Highways, State Highways in a Hub and Spoke model.