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NDA Government has big record in developing roads and Highways. Way back in 1999 itself, Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government had launched National Highways Development Project (NHDP). Six years of NDA regime (1998-2004) has been considered a golden period in terms of infrastructural growth. Carrying this legacy forward, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley budgeted an amount of INR 37,880 crore for the sector. An amount of  INR 3, 000 crore was also issued for roads connecting North-East States.

Speaking in Parliament, Minister said, "The sector (roads) had taken shape from 1998-2004 under NDA-I. The sector again needs huge amount of investment along with de-bottlenecking from maze of clearances".
"The task before me today is very challenging because we need to revive growth, particularly in infrastructure to raise adequate resources for our developmental needs," Jaitley added. Finance Ministry also unveiled plan to construct 8,500 km stretch of national highways during 2014-15 which mean around 23 km of highways must be constructed per day.

Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari welcomed the move and said, "It will give a fillip to infrastructure development in the country. India has emerged as one of the largest PPP markets in the world with over 900 projects in various stages of development".

The road sectors has suffered a lot in last few years and the main reason behind it is delays in clearances, the economic downturn and cautious lending by banks. According to a report, concerned Ministry had awarded 7,500 km of projects since 2012, but work couldn't be completed and it stuck in middle because of various issues like fund crunch faced by developers and other environmental clearances. According to a report, erstwhile UPA government could add only 315 km to India's highway network since 2009.

The road Ministry recently had released a white paper on the issue which said, "Ministries whose contribution was integral to the timely completion of projects went about their task unmindful and unconcerned with the crisis they were creating due to delayed clearances/ sanctions, secure since the system demanded no accountability from them". Earlier, after coming in power the Prime Minister Narendra Modi took the cognisance of the issue and asked the Ministry for a list of highway projects which stuck in middle because of various reasons.

Source-On Request