In a statement on Monday, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said that a new express highway connecting Delhi and Mumbai will be built at a cost of Rs 1 lakh crore.

The expressway project is going to reduce the distance between the cities to 1,250 kms from 1,450km (through NH8), which will reduce the travel time to 12 hours from the earlier 24, reported TOI.

There are also talks on building a Chambal expressway that would be connected to the Delhi-Mumbai expressway.
The Chambal expressway will benefit the states of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

Ten such road projects are underway said Gadkari, costing Rs 35,600 crore. The focus would be to de-congest the Delhi NCR area as 40,000 commercial vehicles enter the city on a daily basis creating congestion.

An ambitious scheme of developing Eastern and Western Peripheral Expressways around Delhi was taken up. Its Eastern Peripheral Expressway will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the 29th of April. The Delhi-Dasna portion of the Delhi-Meerut Expressway will also be inaugrated on the same day.

Gadkari informed that work on signal-free corridor from Dhaula Kuan to Airport has been awarded at a cost of Rs 260 crore. He said, eight-lane fully access-controlled Dwarka Expressway is being developed in four packages. While three packages have already been awarded, the work on the expressway is likely to start in a month's time. Total investment on the project is Rs 9,500 crore.

With inputs from PTI