MoRTH fast-track ₹35,000-cr Katra-Delhi expressway

The first-of-its-kind Katra-Delhi Express Road Corridor involving an investment of ₹35,000 crore is all set to e commissioned by 2023, Union minister Jitendra Singh, said, elaborating that the corridor will reduce the road travel time from Katra to Delhi to around six and a half hours, and from Jammu to Delhi to just six hours, he claimed shortly after meeting Union transport minister, Nitin Gadkari. The 575-km-long express road corridor will connect Katra to Delhi via Amritsar. The other important cities that it will touch include Jalandhar, Kapurthala, Ludhiana in Punjab and, Kathua and Jammu. The unique feature of this road corridor is that it will connect the two holy cities of Katra and Amritsar, and at the same time also offer connectivity to score of the important religious shrines between the two destinations. The minister, who is representing Katra Vaishno Devi parliamentary seat, had been pursuing this project since 2015 and had for the first time about three and half years ago announced the project during a program at Katra. As of now, the process of survey, land acquisition, forest clearances are currently underway. However, Singh said that after the completion of the survey by M/S Feedback Consultants Ltd, the process of acquisition of land is nearly complete in the Haryana part of the corridor and will now be taken up in the Punjab area and thereafter in the Jammu and Kashmir segment. The formal approval of the proposal had already been obtained from the Jammu and Kashmir administration and now it has also been obtained from the Punjab government as well, he claimed.