The Narendra Modi government inherited a pile of stalled road projects from the UPA regime. Speaking to Bloomberg TV India, Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari said no road project in the country will have any problem after December. Even the financial woes will go away as the government can now fund projects worth ₹5 lakh crore, he said.

You have undertaken a review of the Delhi-Jaipur Highway — your first. What is its significance? How many more reviews do you plan?

This is one of the complicated projects and we are facing a lot of problems. It was expected that the project would be completed before 2011 but it is still on.

Now, we have just understood all the problems and have taken a decision. It gives me great satisfaction to say that before December we will complete 95 per cent of the project. Of the 55 flyovers, 52 will be completed and the balance three will take two-three months more.

We will complete the road network and it will give a great relief to the people of Rajasthan and Delhi.

Implementation of projects is a huge concern. On Wednesday we saw the Cabinet approving one-time funding for highway projects. Can you share some details on what has been approved?

The problems are mostly with build-operate-transfer PPP projects. We have decided to finance more than 50 per cent of the work. In case of the previous government, a lot of orders were given without land acquisition, without forest and environmental clearances, without utility shifting. So the projects got stuck. The contractors and companies are facing a lot of financial problems. Banks are not ready to give them support.

We have to find out a solution. Now, the priorities are not discussing the problem but finding out a solution. Already we have taken a decision and the problems have been addressed. After December, there won’t a single road where there is a problem.

So how many road projects have you identified for the upfront payment that the government will give and what are the criteria for the selection?

As many as 101 projects are already with us — we can scrutinise the projects. And finally the financial constraint is not a problem.

The Railways has raised a lot of funds in the last one-and-a-half years. It has made an arrangement with the LIC and is in talks with the World Bank also. What kind of innovative funding model are you looking at for highway projects?

Presently a ₹42,000-crore budget support is with us. We have a tax exempted bond of ₹70, 000 crore. Third, we are getting around ₹8,000 crore revenue annually from the toll. Presently, for funding projects worth ₹5 lakh crore, we will not have any problem.

This 70,000 crore bonds will be raised this year by NHAI?

We are going to take a decision about it. But today, finance is not a problem. Our problem is how we can make our process fast and start the projects.

What about reviving or reviewing the greenfield expressways which have also been on the government radar?

From December we will start our new expressway work from Vadodara to Mumbai. We are planning to start the Delhi-Meerut expressway within two months and it is also a green express highway access control.

The starting of this road from Delhi is 14 lanes.

We are also planning to make highways from Delhi to Katra, Delhi to Jind, Jind to Ludhiana, Ludhiana to Amritsar and Amritsar to Katra. We are also making a study for a Chennai-Bangalore express highway, also for Ranchi and Bokaro, Nagpur and Mumbai. So next year we are going to start work on the new express highways.

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