Dwarka Expressway: All you need to know about India’s first 8-lane elevated highway

Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) Nitin Gadkari on Sunday night (August 20) shared a video of Dwarka Expressway which is under construction and described it as “marvel of engineering”.

On Twitter, Gadkari shared a 3.20-minute-long video that shows glimpses of the Dwarka Expressway. He captioned it, “Marvel of Engineering: The Dwarka Expressway! A State-of-the-Art Journey into the Future.”

The minister said Dwarka Expressway will be opened for traffic in “three to four months”. He added that the people of Delhi who travel on this expressway will “not forget this highway for 100 years”.

Allegations of scam over Dwarka Expressway

Gadkari’s Twitter post on Dwarka Expressway comes days after the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) alleged a scam in the construction of the expressway.

Last week, the AAP protested at the under-construction Dwarka Expressway in Delhi after the Comptroller Auditor General of India (CAG) reportedly flagged the huge cost escalation in the construction of the expressway.

Several party leaders and workers, including chief national spokesperson Priyanka Kakkar and Reena Gupta, gathered near the Dwarka Expressway Highway, alleging the project to be a “scam”. “This is such a big scam that the road, for which an approval of Rs 18 crore per km was given, was built at a cost of Rs 251 crore,” Kakkar told PTI.

According to media reports, the CAG audit report on the implementation of Phase-I of the ‘Bharatmala Pariyojana’ highway projects flagged how the National Highways Authority of India’s (NHAI) decision to go for an elevated carriageway on the Haryana portion of the Dwarka Expressway pushed up the construction cost to Rs 251 crore per kilometre from Rs 18.2 crore per kilometre.

However, the Ministry of Road, Transport and Highways has rejected the charge, calling it “gross misrepresentation of facts”.

Here is all you need to know about Dwarka Expressway

• Dwarka Expressway is India’s first eight-lane elevated road
• The expressway connects Dwarka in Delhi to Gurugram in Haryana
• For the first time in India, 1,200 trees were re-transplanted to make way for Dwarka Expressway
• The expressway will also have India’s first 8-lane 3.6 km-long urban tunnel
• Dwarka Expressway will have Intelligent Transport System (ITS)
• “Dwarka Expressway is being built using 2 lakh tonnes of steel which is 30 times more than what was used to build the Eiffel Tower in Paris,” said the Union government
• “About 20 lakh cubic meters of cement concrete is used for Dwarka Expressway, which is six times what the cement was used to build Dubai’s Burj Khalifa,” it added
• Dwarka Expressway will reduce the travel time between Dwarka and Manesar to just 15 minutes, between Manesar and Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport to just 20 minutes, between Dwarka and NH 8 Singhu border to 25 minutes, and Manesar to Singhu border to 45 minutes
• Dwarka Expressway will bypass NH 48 between Shiv Murti near Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi and Kherki Daula toll plaza near Manesar, Haryana
• It will be a fully access controlled grade separated 14-lane Expressway, the first of its kind in the country
• Dwarka Expressway is also known as the Northern Peripheral Road in Haryana portion, and is being developed as the first elevated urban expressway in India
• Dwarka Expressway is 29 km in length and is being built at a cost of Rs 9,000 crore
• The 34-metre wide expressway is being constructed on an 18.9 km single pillar in Haryana and 10.1 km long in Delhi
• In Haryana, Dwarka Expressway will intersect Pataudi Road (SH-26) near Harsaru and Farukhnagar (SH-15A) near Basai, apart from this, it will also cross the Delhi-Rewari rail line near Gurgaon Sector-88 (B) and UER-II at Bharthal
• It will also connect Sector-21 of Gurgaon with Sector-88, 83, 84, 99, 113 and Dwarka to Global City
• This entire expressway will have Intelligent Transport System (ITS) facility, Gadkari had said
• According to Gadkari, the road network of Dwarka Expressway is of four levels. He said flyover is being constructed over tunnel, underpass, grade road, elevated road and flyover
• A 3-lane service road is being constructed on both sides of the expressway
• India’s widest 8-lane tunnel of 3.6 km length is being built on Dwarka Expressway in Delhi
• Dwarka Expressway is a four-package highway with a total lane-wide length of 563 kilometres
• Dwarka Express is expected to improve the connectivity of the people of Haryana and West Delhi to the Indira Gandhi International Airport
• Dwarka Expressway will reduce pressure on the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway (part of the Delhi-Jaipur-Ahmedabad-Mumbai arm of Golden Quadrilateral) and arterial roads that experience severe traffic congestion, primarily from the commuters of West Delhi, said Gadkari
• He said 50%-60% of traffic on NH-8 will be diverted onto the new expressway, thereby improving traffic movement towards Sohna Road, Golf Course Road, and air extension
• Once operational, Dwarka Expressway shall immensely help reduce the air pollution in Delhi-NCR as well, said Gadkari