The long wait for an expressway connecting Chennai and Bengaluru might come to an end as the Union Finance Minister has announced that work will finally be started on the project.
The Union Budget for the year 2020-21 was presented by Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday, in which she said that the government will undertake accelerated development of highways in 2020-21, including the long overdue Chennai-Bengaluru expressway.
“Accelerated development of highways will be undertaken. This will include development of 2,500 km access control highways, 9,000 km of economic corridors, 2,000 km of coastal and land port roads and 2,000 km of strategic highways. Delhi-Mumbai Expressway and two other packages would be completed by 2023 . Chennai-Bengaluru Expressway would also be started,” she stated in her speech.
The project, which was mooted in 2011, will be a 262-kilometre long six lane highway from Hoskote to Sriperumbudur near Chennai. It will run through Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. The project approval was granted by the Union government after seven years and the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) had planned to begin work on the project in September - October 2019.
According to a report by Deepa H Ramakrishnan of The Hindu, the proposed highway will be an alternative to the existing road connecting Chennai and Bengaluru via Krishnagiri and Ranipet, which is 372 kilometres long. The new highway will run through Kolar and Chittoor and will also have toll booths.
The project will cost around Rs 18,000 crore and involves the acquisition of around 2,600 hectares of land, as per a report by Akshatha M in Economic Times.
The bids for the construction of the expressway will soon be opened. However, no timeline has been specified for the completion of the construction work. It has been reported that the Karnataka government is working towards starting the project at the earliest and that the land acquisition is almost finished.