New Delhi: The government has increased allocation of funds more than 4 times for the development of national highways in eight years.
From RS 24,700 Crore in 2014-15, the allocation has increased to Rs 1.17 lakh Crore at 2021-22, an increase of 448%.
Road and highway services to Lok Sabha last week that the average annual NH construction in the last seven years was 9,000 km and on average, the works were provided for widening and construction of NHS 10,781 Km.
It is said that 41 projects that cost around Rs 26,500 Crore have been postponed for several reasons, including non-availability of land and financial inability of contractors.
Data also shows that the highway ministry continued NHS notification after putting a short break in 2019-20.
In fact, in the last 10 years, the NHS declaration touched the lowest in 2019-20 when almost 495 km of the state road was converted to NHS.
But at 2020-21, it increased to 5,381 km.
The conversion of state roads to NHS is always seen as a political achievement, both by the center and state.
Data accessed since 2011-12 shows that the maximum length of 13,085 km of state road was told as NHS in 2016-17 and 12,503 km again added to NH networks in 2017-18.
In the next two years, this fell to 6,174 km and 495 km.