Cracking under pressure: Flagship highways suffer damage in monsoon showers
From massive potholes to caved-in link roads, heavy rains expose severe construction and drainage lapses across newly built, high-profile highway networks
Even as Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari showcases India’s expanding highway network as a flagship achievement, this year's monsoon has exposed troubling cracks — quite literally.
From potholed stretches on the Delhi-Dehradun or Delhi-Mumbai or Delhi-Gurugram expressways, several recently built or widened highways are found to be buckling under heavy rain.
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The recurring damage has reignited questions about construction quality, environmental clearances, and whether the speed of expansion has come at the cost of durability. Many of these high-profile routes have been flagged off for operations by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Dangerous potholes on Delhi-Dehradun Expressway
Last week, two alarming potholes appeared on the Delhi-Dehradun Expressway near Shamli in Uttar Pradesh, less than three months after the PM inaugurated it. The quality of the road, built for Rs 12,000 crore, was exposed by the season’s first monsoon rain, triggering outrage. A few speeding vehicles suffered damage even though there was no major accident.
The opposition Congress cited corruption as the reason, while the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) put the onus on local residents, accusing them of obstructing the construction plan for a cross-drainage system. The NHAI, which is responsible for the expressway’s maintenance, suspended some key officials after the holes caused an uproar.
Eight-foot-wide hole on ‘game-changing’ Delhi-Mumbai Expressway
Around the same time, videos went viral showing damaged stretches on the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway near Ankleshwar in Gujarat and in Sawai Madhopur in Rajasthan. In Gujarat, there was an eight-foot-wide hole. The NHAI, which developed the project, came under criticism.
According to a Times of India report on the stretch in Rajasthan, the NHAI had cancelled the agreement of the expressway's contractor in April after it failed to meet the contractual obligations time and again.
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Official sources said that the residual works were suspended in April and the remaining construction work was given to a new builder. The NHAI also dispatched technical teams for inspection and reportedly took strict action against infrastructure quality lapses on various stretches of the major expressway.
The project, which Gadkari has championed as a game-changing infrastructure project, runs for nearly 1,400 kilometres and will be completed by 2027-28. PM Modi inaugurated it partially in February 2023. The project’s estimated cost is over Rs 1 lakh crore.
Dwarka Expressway suffers structural damage
Complaints of structural damage on the Dwarka Expressway point largely to shoddy construction of service roads and connecting links, seepage in underpasses, and unchecked garbage dumping threatening the highway's integrity. Key incidents include a newly built 1.3 km link near Sectors 102/102A eroding badly, drawing resident backlash, and service roads repeatedly losing their asphalt layer within weeks of repair, leaving commuters dodging loose stones and craters. Seepage and structural wear leave the road quality compromised.
The 29-kilometre highway, running from New Delhi to Gurugram in Haryana, was built for Rs 9,000 crore under the NHAI’s supervision and inaugurated in two phases, in 2024 and 2025. As reports of the damage emerged, the government undertook immediate restoration work.
Connecting road between two expressways cave in
On Sunday (July 5), a part of the road connecting the Kanpur-Lucknow National Highway with the Ganga Expressway in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh caved in soon after the first monsoon rain fell, with the underlying soil getting washed away.
Officials said the repair work began soon after the seven-metre stretch of the link road near Bashiratganj in the Sonik area, where it connects to the Ganga Expressway, crumbled. The 594-kilometre-long expressway was inaugurated by Modi in April.
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Residents complained that the slope protection and soil retention measures taken along the road did not meet the prescribed standards, resulting in its collapse during the first shower itself.
Developed by Uttar Pradesh Expressways Industrial Development Authority, the access-controlled expressway is designed to improve connectivity across western and central Uttar Pradesh, passing through 12 districts, and is among the state's flagship infrastructure projects.
The Kanpur-Lucknow Expressway (National Highway 6) is set to be inaugurated on July 13. Besides Gadkari, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, other dignitaries will also be present. The 63-kilometre-long highway has been built by the NHAI for Rs 4,700 crore.