Nitin Gadkari, Member of Parliament for Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) representing Nagpur, is a strong politician returning for his third term as the Minister for Road Transport and Highways, where he has singularly led the way in expanding highways and expressways across India.
The 67-year-old leader has been vital in driving the economic thrust of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which is centered around a surge in GDP growth through high investment in large-scale infrastructure projects. This has transferred the country from being one of the "fragile five" economies to one of the top five in the world.
On the face of it, his reappointment offers continuity of policies that have seen this country being the best performing economy since the term of the Modi 3.0 government.
Official statistics reveal that the national highway network has expanded 60 percent to 1,46,145 km in 2023 compared to 91,287 km in 2014. This last one decade, Gadkari and his team built a staggering 54,860 km of national highways.
The road construction drive in India is set to continue on a fast clip with a plan for building as much as 13,000 km of highways in 2024-25, constituting up to 5 to 8 percent higher than the preceding year, rating agency ICRA said in a recent note.
An interim budget has hiked the financial outlay for the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways to Rs 2.78 lakh crore in 2024-25, up 3 percent from the massive estimate of Rs 2.7 lakh crore for the last year.
He further detailed plans for more private investment in highways to speed up development and create more jobs. Of the 176 projects that were tendered during the financial year 2023-24, only one was a BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) project.
A total of 53 BOT (Toll) projects, which cover 5,200 km valued at Rs 2.1 lakh crore, have been identified, while bids have been invited for seven projects covering 387 km valued at Rs 27,000 crore in the coming months.
Under BOT (Toll), contractors bid for projects based on the revenue they expect from the highway stretches, which will not only pay for the construction but also enable them to make a profit by collecting toll for a specific concession period.
A number of high-speed corridors are planned under 'Vision 2047' of the Government of India, and Gadkari's rich experience in the sector would ideally prove decisive.
