1998 – 2004 · NDA
Foundations
Vajpayee-era NHDP, the Golden Quadrilateral, North–South & East–West corridors, and rural PMGSY set the template.
The Big Picture
Three Eras of Road-Building
India's highways were built across three political eras — laying the foundations, expanding the programme, then accelerating to record pace.
2004 – 2014 · UPA
Expansion
NHDP phases III–VII on BOT/PPP toll models; the Golden Quadrilateral is completed (2012) — but the pace stays modest (~12 km/day by 2014).
2014 – 2026 · NDA
Acceleration
Modi-era Bharatmala, an expressway boom, FASTag and record pace — the network grows ~60% to the world's 2nd-largest.
Year by Year
Milestones · 1998–2026
The key programmes and projects, tagged by category and the government of the day. The line fills as you scroll.
The Log
Every Milestone, by Category
The same milestones in a compact table — programme, expressway, pace, digital and network changes.
| Year | What was built / implemented | Category |
|---|
The Numbers
How Much It Grew
National-highway length and the average construction pace, year by year. The big jump comes after 2017.
| Year | NH length (km) | Pace (km/day) | Note |
|---|
NH length is total national highways; pace is average km built per day in the year. FY2024-25 is provisional. Source: MoRTH / PIB Year-End Review.
Flagship Programmes
The Big Central Projects
The marquee programmes and corridors run by the Centre through NHAI / MoRTH.
- 5,846 km Golden Quadrilateral — Delhi–Mumbai–Chennai–Kolkata (1999, done 2012)
- ₹5.35 L cr Bharatmala Phase-1 (2017) — ~34,800 km of corridors & expressways
- 1,350 km Delhi–Mumbai Expressway — India's longest, ~₹1 lakh crore (NHAI)
- 21.8 km Atal Setu (MTHL), 2024 — India's longest sea bridge (Mumbai)
- 16 lanes Dwarka Expressway, 2024 — India's widest; eases Delhi–Gurugram
- ₹72,500 cr FASTag toll collected (FY25) — 95%+ digital; heading toward ₹1 lakh cr
- Bharatmala is the umbrella for most new central road-building since 2017 — economic corridors, inter-corridors, feeder routes, ring roads, and expressways including the Delhi–Mumbai Expressway.
- PMGSY (rural roads, since 2000) is run by the Ministry of Rural Development, not MoRTH, but is the other half of India's road story — connecting hundreds of thousands of villages.
Access-Controlled
Major Expressways
India crossed ~7,300 km of operational expressways by 2026 (with ~11,000+ km more under construction). They fall into three groups: national ones built by NHAI (officially numbered NE-1, NE-3, NE-4…), state ones by agencies like UPEIDA/MSRDC, and centre–state ones built jointly. All major operational expressways are listed below, national first.
| Expressway | Length (km) | Opened | Built by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delhi–Mumbai (NE-4) | ~1,350 | sections 2023– | NHAI (central) |
| Delhi–Dehradun | 210 | 2026 | NHAI (central) |
| Eastern Peripheral (Delhi) | 135 | 2018 | NHAI (central) |
| Bengaluru–Mysuru | 119 | 2023 | NHAI (central) |
| Ahmedabad–Vadodara (NE-1) | 93 | 2004 | NHAI — India's 1st national |
| Delhi–Meerut (NE-3) | 82 | 2021 | NHAI (central) |
| Dwarka (16-lane) | 28 | 2024 | NHAI (central) |
| Western Peripheral / KMP (Delhi) | 136 | 2018 | HSIIDC ↔ NHAI (centre–state) |
| Mumbai–Nagpur (Samruddhi) | 701 | 2022–2025 | MSRDC (state) |
| Ganga Expressway | 594 | 2026 | UPEIDA (state) |
| Purvanchal | 341 | 2021 | UPEIDA (state) |
| Agra–Lucknow | 302 | 2016 | UPEIDA (state) |
| Bundelkhand | 296 | 2022 | UPEIDA (state) |
| Yamuna | 166 | 2012 | YEIDA (state) |
| Mumbai–Pune (India's 1st expressway) | 95 | 2002 | MSRDC (state) |
| Atal Setu (MTHL, sea bridge) | 22 | 2024 | MMRDA (state) |
All major operational expressways, national first. Approximate lengths; some opened in sections. Source: Wikipedia (Expressways of India) / NHAI. "Central" = NHAI/MoRTH; "state" = a state agency.
- National vs state: NHAI builds the numbered National Expressways — NE-1 Ahmedabad–Vadodara was India's first (2004), NE-4 is the Delhi–Mumbai. Many famous ones — Yamuna, Agra–Lucknow, Purvanchal, Mumbai–Pune, Samruddhi — are state projects (UPEIDA, MSRDC, etc.).
- Centre–state projects: some are built jointly — the Western Peripheral / KMP (Delhi bypass) was an NHAI-backed corridor executed by Haryana's HSIIDC; Atal Setu by Maharashtra's MMRDA. More broadly the Centre funds and builds while states acquire the land (~20% of cost), increasingly cost-shared under NHAI's 2021 Value Capture Finance policy.
In the Pipeline
Under Construction
Beyond what's open, ~11,000+ km of expressways and many national-highway corridors are being built — here are the big national ones (lengths and dates are targets and can shift).
| Corridor | Length (km) | Target | Built by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delhi–Mumbai (remaining, NE-4) | ~1,350 | 2026–28 | NHAI (central) |
| Amritsar–Jamnagar | ~1,256 | ~2026 | NHAI (central) |
| Delhi–Amritsar–Katra | ~669 | ~2026 | NHAI (central) |
| Bengaluru–Chennai (NE-7) | ~262 | 2026 | NHAI (central) |
| Lucknow–Kanpur (NE-6) | ~63 | 2026 | NHAI (central) |
| Ganga Expressway (Meerut–Prayagraj) | 594 | 2026 | UPEIDA (state) |
| Gorakhpur Link & other UP corridors | ~91+ | 2024– | UPEIDA (state) |
Selected major corridors under construction (not exhaustive); ~11,000+ km of expressways are in build nationwide. Targets are official estimates and frequently revised. Source: NHAI / MoRTH / Wikipedia.
- What's next: the Centre is also planning a "Golden Quadrilateral 2.0" high-speed expressway grid linking major economic hubs, on top of continuing Bharatmala corridors, ring roads and access-controlled greenfield highways.
The Other Side
Road Safety & Tolls
More and faster roads carry more traffic — and India's road-accident toll is among the world's highest. This is the challenge that comes with the growth.
- ~1.73 lakh Road-accident deaths in 2023 — ~20 an hour; among the world's highest
- ~4.8 lakh Road accidents in 2023 (462,825 injured) — rising with traffic
- 95%+ Toll paid via FASTag — electronic, near-cashless plazas since 2021
- ~₹3.10 L cr MoRTH budget (FY27) — up from ~₹99,000 cr in FY21
- Safety is the flip side of growth: in 2023 India recorded ~4.8 lakh accidents and ~1.73 lakh deaths (up ~2.6% on 2022). Two-wheelers account for ~45% of deaths and pedestrians ~20% — which is why the focus is on engineering fixes, junctions, and the Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act.
- Tolls fund the build: FASTag made tolling almost fully electronic; collections of ~₹72,500 crore (FY25) are projected toward ₹1 lakh crore, helping finance the expanding network alongside record budgets.