No toll tax within 60 km; Delhi to Amritsar in 4 hours by year-end: Gadkari

Ajay Banerjee

New Delhi, March 22

Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari announced in Lok Sabha that all toll collecting points which are within 60 kilometre of each other on the national highways will be closed in the next three months.  

“There will be only one toll collection within 60 km distance,” the minister announced while replying to a discussion in Lok Sabha on the roads and highways allocation of the budget for the fiscal year commencing April 1.

Speaking about upcoming roads, he said Delhi-Amritsar-Katra expressway is being readied. The Delhi-Amritsar section will be done by the end of this year and the distance will be covered in four hours.  

Also the Srinagar-Jammu Road will have a connection to join the upcoming Katra-Amritsar-Delhi road, allowing seamless connectivity. 

By this road, the journey from Srinagar to Mumbai will be done in 20 hours, Gadkari said adding that “I am trying that (Jammu-Srinagar highway upgrade) it’s done by the year end”.

Also the Delhi-Jaipur, the Delhi-Mumbai and the Delhi-Dehradun expressways will be done by the end of the year. While Jaipur and Dehradun will be reachable within two hours each, the Delhi-Mumbai distance will be covered in car within 12 hours.

The minister said he has set a target to open the tunnel under the Zoji La – a 11,650 feet high pass on Srinagar-Leh highway by 2024.

On the roads connecting the religious circuit, Gadkari said the route to Mansarovar (in Tibet) will be ready on our side by the end of 2023 via Uttarakhand.  

On road safety, the Minister said, it is now mandatory that all cars come with six air bags. For road engineering, the best global road planners are being roped in.

Some 1.50 lakh people are dying annually in road accidents in the country and these are young people. The Government, he said is working with the World Bank to bring about a change. The World Bank did work with the Tamil Nadu government. They have had some success in reducing accidents. “We are looking at implementing the Tamil Nadu model”.

Earlier, Opposition parties MPs staged a walkout of Lok Sabha in protest against the LPG price hike. The Congress, DMK, TMC, NCP, JMM, CPM, CPI, IUML, RSP, MDMK and VCK walked out.