President Droupadi Murmu's address to the nation on the eve of the 79th Independence Day.
Gadkari is credited with the construction of more than 90,000 km of national highways and 30,000 km of new roads in the country in the last 10 years.
'With new projects and recently awarded projects kicking in, capital expenditure should only increase going forward.'
With a large number of Indian youth aspiring to work in the railways, delays in filling up railway job vacancies were a point of criticism against the BJP in the run-up to the elections.
According to an official statement, Union road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari said the 19 other places in the country include Phalodi-Jaisalmer road and Barmer-Jaisalmer road in Rajasthan, Kharagpur-Balasore road in West Bengal, Hashimara-Guwahati road in Assam, Bhuj-Naliya road in Gujarat, Leh/Nyoma area in Assam and on the Jorhat-Baraghat road, among others.
Road construction witnessed a near 60 per cent year-on-year jump in the first two months of financial year 2021-22 (FY22), despite restrictions being imposed in the wake of the second wave of Covid-19. Around 1,470 km of roads were constructed during the first two months of the current fiscal, as against 847 km in the corresponding period last year, according to official figures. However, these are provisional numbers as the state public works departments of Maharashtra and Goa are yet to provide data.
NH-925 is India's first national highway to be used for emergency landing of IAF aircraft.
The thrust will be on improving connectivity in economic corridors and remote and border areas with a view to hike trade and enable faster movement of cargo.
Expressing commitment to augment the country's infrastructure, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday proposed to significantly enhance capital expenditure to Rs 5.54 lakh crore in the next fiscal, besides creating institutional structures and giving a big thrust to monetizing assets to achieve the goals of the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP). Sitharaman said NIP, that was launched in December 2019 with 6,835 projects, has now been expanded to 7,400 projects and around 217 projects worth Rs 1.10 lakh crore under some key infrastructure ministries have been completed. "For 2021-22, I propose a sharp increase in capital expenditure and thus have provided Rs 5.54 lakh crores which is 34.5% more than the BE of 2020-21," the finance minister said.
Over the years, NHAI's expenses have spiraled due to sharp increase in land acquisition costs, while budgetary support has shrunk, leading it to fall back on internal resources and market borrowings
'Despite the pandemic, we aspire to maintain the momentum of last year.'
Here's the full text of President Ram Nath Kovind's customary address to the joining sitting of Parliament on the first day of the budget session.
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