Bharatmala

The Bharatmala Pariyojna (lit. '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 8000 km, 116 feeder routes (FR) of total 7500 km 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 83677 km committed new highways is estimated at inr 10630000000000, 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.

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. Many state highways have been converted to National Highways under this project.

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.

Context
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. Bharatmala phase-I will raise the NH connection to a total of 80% or 550 districts out of total 718 districts from the current 42% or 300 districts connected to NH (dec 2017). 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.

NHIDCL
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.

Central Road Fund (CRF)
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.

Impact
Bharatmala will significantly boost highway infrastructure:
 * Raise 6 NC corridors to 50 corridors (6 NC and 44 EC)
 * Raise 40% freight to 80% freight on National Highways
 * Raise 300 districts to 550 districts connected by minimum 4-lane highways.

National Highways Development Project (NHDP)
NHDP project covers 48793 km, including 28915 km completed, 10574 km under construction and 9,304 km left for award (as of May 2017). 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 (NC)
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. Lane expansion to 6 to 8 laning, ring roads, bypasses and elevated corridors will be built in Bharatmala to decongest the National Corridors. Logistics Parks will be set up along the NC. Busiest stretches of National Corridors will be converted to the expressways. 8000 km inter-corridor and 7500 km feeder routes will be built. Additionally, 3300 km of border roads and 2000 km international highways will be built to connect 6 National Corridors to international trade routes.

National Corridors Efficiency Program (NCEP)
National Corridors Efficiency Program (NCEP) entails 5000 km phase-I decongestion of 185 choke points by 34 6-8 laning, 45 bypasses and 30 ring roads of 6 NC.

New ring roads in Bharatmala include:


 * Agra
 * Amaravati
 * Belgaum
 * Bengaluru
 * Berhampur
 * Bhubaneswar
 * Chitradurga
 * Delhi
 * Dhanbad
 * Dhule
 * Gurugram
 * Indore
 * Jabalpur
 * Jaipur
 * Kota
 * Lucknow
 * Madurai
 * Nagpur
 * Patna
 * Pune
 * Raipur
 * Ranchi
 * Sagar
 * Sambalpur
 * Shivpuri
 * Solapur
 * Surat
 * Thiruvananthapuram
 * Udaipur
 * Varanasi
 * Vijayawada

Economic Corridors
Economic Corridors of India or Industrial Corridors of India, 44 corridors 26200 km were identified and 9000 km will be taken up in phase-I, they exclude 6 National Corridors, they include:  66 8000 km inter-corridors (IC) & 116 7500 km feeder routes (FR) were identified for Bharatmala.

List of 44 economic corridors (EC):


 * EC-1: Mumbai-Kolkata
 * EC-2: Mumbai-Kanyakumari
 * EC-3: Amritsar-Jamnagar
 * EC-4: Kandla-Sagar
 * EC-5: Agra-Mumbai
 * EC-6: Pune-Vijayawada
 * EC-7: Raipur-Dhanbad
 * EC-8: Ludhiana-Ajmer
 * EC-9: Surat-Nagpur
 * EC-10: Hyderabad-Panaji
 * EC-11: Jaipur-Indore
 * EC-12: Solapur-Nagpur
 * EC-13: Sagar-Varanasi
 * EC-14: Kharagpur-Siliguri
 * EC-15: Raipur-Visakhapatnam
 * EC-16: Delhi-Lucknow
 * EC-17: Chennai-Kurnool
 * EC-18: Indore-Nagpur
 * EC-19: Chennai-Madurai
 * EC-20: Mangaluru-Raichur
 * EC-21: Tuticorin-Cochin
 * EC-22: Solapur-Bellary-Gooty
 * EC-23: Hyderabad-Aurangabad
 * EC-24: Delhi-Kanpur
 * EC-25: Tharad-Phalodi
 * EC-26: Nagaur-Mandi Dabwali
 * EC-27: Sagar-Lucknow
 * EC-28: Sambalpur-Paradeep
 * EC-29: Amreli-Vadodra
 * EC-30: Godhra-Khargone
 * EC-31: Sambalpur-Ranchi
 * EC-32: Bengaluru-Malappuram
 * EC-33: Raisen-Pathariya
 * EC-34: Bengaluru-Mangaluru
 * EC-35: Chittaurgarh-Indore
 * EC-36: Bilaspur-New Delhi
 * EC-37: Solapur-Mahabubnagar
 * EC-38: Bengaluru-Nellore
 * EC-39: Ajmer-Udaipur
 * EC-40: Sirsa-Delhi
 * EC-41: Sirohi-Beawar
 * EC-42: Jaipur-Agra
 * EC-43: Pune-Aurangabad
 * EC-44: North East Corridor

Logistics parks
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).

(IMT Manesar) (Nangal Choudhary IMHL)
 * Ambala
 * Bengaluru
 * Bathinda
 * Bhopal
 * Chennai
 * Cochin
 * Coimbatore
 * Guwahati
 * Hisar
 * Hyderabad
 * Indore
 * Jagatsinghpur
 * Jaipur
 * Jammu
 * Kandla
 * Kolkata
 * Kota
 * Nagpur
 * Nashik
 * Panaji
 * Patna
 * Pune
 * Raipur
 * Rajkot
 * Solan
 * Sundargarh
 * Valsad
 * Vijayawada
 * Visakhapatnam
 * North Gujarat
 * Ahmedabad
 * Vadodara
 * South Gujarat
 * Surat
 * Bharuch
 * North Punjab
 * Jalandhar
 * Amritsar
 * Gurdaspur
 * South Punjab
 * Ludhiana
 * Sangrur
 * Patiala
 * Delhi-NCR
 * Delhi
 * Faridabad
 * Narnaul
 * Ghaziabad
 * MMR
 * Mumbai
 * Mumbai suburbs
 * Jnpt
 * Mumbai Port
 * Thane
 * Raigad

Northeast India connectivity
North East Economic corridor will connect 7 state capitals and 7 multimodal waterways terminals on Brahmaputra on the bharatmala route (slide 21).


 * Dhubri
 * Silghat
 * Biswanath Ghat
 * Neamati
 * Dibrugarh
 * Sengajan
 * Oriyamghat

International connectivity
Look-East Connectivity will be further developed in the Bharatmala routes (slide 22).
 * 24 Integrated check posts (ICPs)
 * Transit through Bangladesh to improve Northeast India
 * Integrating Bangladesh–Bhutan–Nepal-Myanmar–Thailand BIMSTEC corridors.

Finance

 * Total budget inr 6923240000000 for 5 years Bharatmala project from 2017 to 2022.
 * inr 1573240000000 existing NH projects subsumed under Bharatmala, such as incomplete National Highways, SARDP-NE, Externally Aided Projects (EAP, e.g. world Bank and ADB), and Left Wing Extremism roads (LWE).
 * inr 5350000000000 phase-I to be completed during 2017-dec 2019:
 * inr 2090000000000 through market borrowings.
 * inr 1060000000000 through private investments.
 * inr 2190000000000 through the Central Road Fund (CRF) and tolls:
 * inr 970000000000 from CRF.
 * inr 340000000000 from new toll monetisation of completed highways.
 * inr 460480000000 from current toll fee from Toll-Permanent Bridge Fee Fund (PBFF)).
 * Fy2017-18:
 * 10000 km highways built at the rate of 27 km/day,
 * inr 650000000000 through allocation in the national budget.
 * Fy2018-19:
 * 24000 km will be awarded.
 * 12000 km will be completed.
 * inr 1630000000000 total spend:
 * inr 780000000000 through allocation in the national budget,
 * inr 600000000000 through bonds,
 * inr 250000000000 through toll monetisation of 30 completed highways.

Implementation phases: 2017-2022
The plan envisages the construction of 83677 km roads, including 34800 km of additional highways and roads across the country, apart from an existing plan of building 48877 km of new highways by the National Highway Authority of India. Bharatmala has synergy with Sagarmala.

Phase 1: 34,800 km by December 2022
The total length of 34800 km highways will be constructed under phase-I by December 2022, including 24800 km of new highways and another 10000 km currently under-construction remaining incomplete under NHDP, compared to 19 years it took to upgrade almost same length of National Highways under NHDP.

Phase-II: 48,877 km (expected 2024)
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.