Rs 18,000 Crore. That’s the estimated cost overrun the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has run up (as per 2002 estimates) as it keeps shifting the milestone on completion of the 7,274-km North-South East-West national highway corridor.

And when it comes to the National Highway Development Programme I, which includes the Golden Quadrilateral, the pace of construction has fallen three times since 2004.

These were some of the figures put before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia recently, when they took stock of the status of various national highway programmes as well as various policy decisions taken for the roads sector by the Committee on Infrastructure.

While officials maintain that this was a regular stocktaking meeting, the other figures were no less alarming:

• For the NS-EW corridor, the sanctioned cost was Rs 5.14 crore per km. By 2005, this had risen, on an average, to Rs 6.4 crore per km, which includes the cost of land acquisition and well as the cost incurred in preparing the detailed project reports for individual projects.

• It is now estimated that the cost per km would be in the region of Rs 7.65 crore per km, increasing the total cost to Rs 50,000 crore. Or an increase of over Rs 18,000 crore.

• The overall costs of all NHDPs have increased by 30 per cent, from an estimated Rs 1,69,500 crore on January 13, 2005, to Rs 2,20,000 crore on January 1, 2006.

... contd.