The development of any nation depends on the transportation networks and the ways in which they are being maintained. For connecting the areas and maintaining smooth flow of traffic, the construction of new and developed roads are a must. The same will be achieved with the implementation of the Bharatmala project. Bharatmala Pariyojana is a new umbrella program for the highways sector that focuses on optimizing efficiency of freight and passenger movement across the country by bridging critical infrastructure gaps through effective interventions like development of Economic Corridors, Inter Corridors and Feeder Routes, National Corridor Efficiency Improvement, Border and International connectivity roads, Coastal and Port connectivity roads and Green-field expressways.The announcement of the mammoth scheme was done by Shri Nitin Gadkari, in the presence of the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi. The total investment for 83,677 km committed to new highways is estimated at ₹5.35 lakh crore, making it the single largest outlay for a government road construction scheme. The project will build highways from Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana and then cover the entire string of Himalayan states and then portions of borders of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar alongside Terai, and move to West Bengal, Sikkim, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, and right up to the Indo-Myanmar border in Manipur and Mizoram. Bharatmala Project will interconnect 550 District Headquarters through a minimum 4-lane highway by raising the number of corridors to 50 and move 80% freight traffic to National Highways by interconnecting 24 logistics parks, 66 inter-corridors of total 8,000 km , 116 feeder routes of total 7,500 km and 7 north east Multi-Modal waterway ports.
