‘Travel from Mumbai to Delhi in 12 hours by road’

Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister for road, transport and highways, at the press conference at Santacruz, on Friday. Pic/Satej Shinde

If everything goes as per plan, then in another year motorists will be able to reach Delhi from Mumbai by road in just 12 hours instead of the existing 48 hours. Union Minister for the Ministry of Road, Transport and Highways (MORT), Nitin Gadkari announced the same while speaking at the national conference on investment opportunities in highways, transport and logistics in Mumbai on Friday.

Gadkari said, "The travel time from Mumbai to Delhi, via road, will go down from 48 hours to 12 hours within a year." He added that road projects and multimodal infrastructure projects will reduce logistics costs and boost manufacturing, increase exports and help the economy grow. Gadkari assured investors that the internal rate of return in the roads development sector was very high, so there was no need to worry about economic viability.

"Earlier, before 2014, projects used to get stalled due to land acquisition issues but we have decided that work will not be awarded till 90 per cent of the acquisition process and environmental clearances are done. Hence, most of the problems related to stalled projects can be solved this way," Gadkari said. He further mentioned, "We are issuing an advisory on Flex Engines and in two to three years our vehicles will be converted into electric ones. The running cost of electric vehicles (EVs) will be similar to or less than those that run on petrol," Gadkari added.

During the conference he also discussed the ambitious Vehicle Scrapping Policy of the Central government and that it would help reduce pollution. "In five years, India's automobile industry, which is 7.5 lakh crore in size, will double. Alternative fuels for running vehicles will ultimately help the scrapping industry. The Vehicle Scrapping Policy will reduce pollution, improve tax revenues, help the automobile sector grow, boost exports and create jobs. It is a win-win situation through which a lot of investment can come in," Gadkari added.

Ashish Kumar Singh, principal secretary, Transport and Ports, Maharashtra, who was present at the conference, said, "I congratulate Gadkari and MORT for announcing the first ever Vehicle Scrapping Policy. The future is going to be electric, maybe even autonomous. This shift can be achieved only by replacing Internal Combustion Engine-driven vehicles with EVs."

Singh also expressed confidence that Maharashtra would become the hub of vehicle scrapping. "With the new policies announced, we hope vehicle owners will come forward, scrap their vehicles and shift to EVs," he added.

MoU signed

During the conference several MoUs were signed. One of them was between MORT, IIT Madras and MapmyIndia, for the expanded rollout of a mobile app, which will provide alerts related to high-frequency road accident zones and safe navigation zones to passengers.