Delhi-Mumbai Expressway to fetch up to ₹1,500 cr revenues every month: Gadkari

Delhi-Mumbai Expressway will fetch toll revenue of up to ₹1,500 crore every month, believes union minister for road and transport, Nitin Gadkari. The union minister has also described the state-owned NHAI as a gold mine for generating high-level income on Sunday.

In an interview with news agency PTI, Gadkari has said that once, the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway is completed and opened for the public, the government will get at least ₹1,000-1,500 crore as toll revenues every month.

The Delhi-Mumbai Expressway is expected to be completed by March 2023. It is going to be the longest express in India. The DME will pass through four states and connect the national capital Delhi with the country's business hub Mumbai.

This eight-lane expressway will cover Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. Gadkari has indicated that at a later stage, depending on the traffic volume, four more lanes are likely to be added to the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway.

The DME will be the first phase of the Bharatmala Pariyojana project. It is claimed to reduce travel time between Delhi and Mumbai to 12 hours from 24 hours. Also, this will connect several business hubs along its route. Gadkari believes that the expressway will be instrumental in boosting developments in those cities and economic zones.

Meanwhile talking about the concerns around NHAI being saddled with high-level debts, Gadkari has said that NHAI is not in a debt trap. He also asserted that it will never be in a debt trap in the future. "It is a gold mine, and is on strong footing... in the next five years, NHAI's toll income will rise to ₹1.40 lakh crore per year from current toll income of ₹40,000 crore," Gadkari further added.

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