Delhi-Amritsar-Katra Expressway will pass through Amritsar: Harsimrat Kaur Badal

Chandigarh, April 29

The Union Food Processing Industries Minister, Harsimrat Kaur Badal, today disclosed that one section of the Delhi-Amritsar-Katra Expressway will pass through Amritsar after being split into two at Kartarpur. The other section will go through Gurdaspur to Katra.

The Union minister said she had recently been informed by the Amritsar Vikas Manch and other social organisations that the Expressway was not going to pass through Amritsar and had herself got alarmed. “I took up the matter with Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari and he informed me that there was no cause of worry for people of Amritsar as the Expressway would not only pass through Amritsar but also the Raja Sansi International Airport,” she added.

Giving details, Harsimrat Badal said the Expressway would split into two from Kartarpur. She said one section going to Amritsar would use the existing highway for 50 km, which would be developed as an access controlled expressway with service roads on both sides even as a new 30-km stretch would be constructed to take the expressway to the Raja Sansi Airport. She added the second section would be a new 65 km stretch, which would take the expressway from Kartarpur  to Gurdaspur, and from there it would join NH 44 for the next 180 km stretch to Katra.

Badal said the expressway left station from Jassur Kheri in Haryana and passed through Ghana- Kalayat in Haryana to enter Punjab near Patran, and from there the expressway would pass through Bhawanigarh and Nakodar to Kartarpur and then be bifurcated in two with one section passing through Amritsar and the other through Gurdaspur.

The Union minister said the total length of the expressway would be 658 km and it would be constructed at a cost of Rs 30,000 crore. The first phase of the project was proposed to be awarded in the current financial year, she added.