Mumbai: Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and his deputy Devendra Fadnavis got into the CM’s vehicle this Sunday to take a test drive along a short stretch of the newly constructed Mumbai-Nagpur expressway. What was unusual was that Fadnavis was behind the steering wheel and the CM in the passenger’s seat.
CM Shinde didn’t mind. Because this is how the project was originally conceptualised. The Mumbai-Nagpur highway, also known as ‘Samruddhi Mahamarg’ (prosperity highway), has been Fadnavis’s pet project.
He first announced it in 2015, back when he was Maharashtra chief minister. Shinde had then been in charge of the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) — the agency implementing the project — as part of the then BJP-Shiv Sena government.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is now scheduled to inaugurate the first leg of the expressway from Nagpur to Shirdi, a 520 km stretch, Sunday. In its entirely, the Samruddhi Mahamarg covers 701 km, making it the state’s longest highway.
Estimated to cost Rs 55,000 crore, it’s the second major expressway in Maharashtra after the Mumbai-Pune Expressway.
“This is no doubt the single biggest project in the country. Of course, the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway, when completed, is going to be longer,” R. Mopalwar, vice-chairman and managing director of MSRDC, told ThePrint. “So, it’s a great feeling of satisfaction.”
The remaining stretch will be opened on 15 July 2023, Moplawar said, adding that about 70-80 per cent of the work there is complete.
Fadnavis had previously set a deadline for 2019 for the project, but it was delayed due to hurdles over land acquisition and later because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Here’s a look at the project and some of the speed bumps it has met along the way.
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‘Game changer’
Officially known as the Hindu Hrudaysamrat Balasaheb Thackeray Maharashtra Samruddhi Mahamarg, the 701-km Mumbai-Nagpur Expressway passes through 14 districts, six talukas, and 392 villages. It will have 24 interchanges, 38 bridges that are over 30 metres long, and 283 others that are shorter than 30 metres.
It will be a “game-changer”, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde told reporters Sunday. “The travel time of 18 hours will come down to six to seven hours. Mumbai and Nagpur will come closer and trade will increase. It will also help farmers.”
Built as a greenfield project, which means that it is brand-new and not made by widening or modernising an existing road, the expressway will have six lanes with an expansion capacity of up to eight lanes.
It is expected to boost development opportunities and trade in the drought-prone areas of Marathwada and Vidarbha. It’s also expected to cut down the current 16-hour travel time between Maharashtra’s summer capital Mumbai and winter capital Nagpur by half.
“The entire ownership of this project was taken up by MSRDC. We worked with collectors, appointed our communicators, and saw that people were on board because there was a fear that there would be a loss to people [if the project was not completed]. We actually succeeded in communication,” Mopalwar said.
When it was first initiated in 2016-17, the project met large-scale protests from farmers. However, protests died after the state government amended its land acquisition policy to give farmers up to five times the market price for their land.
“This is the largest project taken up in the country at any given time. This was under the new acquisition law. Liberal compensation is given and they [farmers] didn’t have to fight for it,” Mopalwar told ThePrint.
The state government has proposed a toll of around Rs 1,200 for cars, which Moplawar claimed is 60 per cent of what is charged along the the Mumbai-Pune Expressway.
“This toll will be the same as what you pay for Mumbai-Nashik. There is no data to compare the absolute figure to any other equivalent expressway. The Mumbai-Pune [expressway] charges Rs 2.95 per km here we are charging Rs 1.72 per km,” Moplawar said.
The project however has been beset by delays. First came resistance to land acquisition. Among those who opposed the project was the Shiv Sena, a party that, under former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, later embarked on a credit war with the BJP over the project.
The Covid pandemic also caused delays, and previously announced deadlines for the 491-km stretch between Nagpur and Shirdi couldn’t be met.
The first phase of the highway between Nagpur and Shelu Bazar was to be inaugurated on 2 May this year, but two construction-related accidents, including the collapse of a wildlife overpass on the expressway, further set back the deadline.
The Maharashtra government, which was then under Thackeray, put off the inauguration until June. However, a split in the Shiv Sena and the subsequent fall of the then Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition government pushed the project back.
Political tussle
Devendra Fadnavis, who belongs to Nagpur, first announced the project when he was chief minister.
In a tweet on 5 April this year, Fadnavis said he had the project in mind for 20 years but that he was happy to see that the “people who had opposed it then were now getting impatient to inaugurate it”.
He was referring to Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena, which had cited the concerns of farmers to oppose the project.
On 26 December 2016, Thackeray, whose party had then been an ally of Fadnavis’s BJP in Maharashtra, said he would “not allow the farmers’ lands to be acquired”.
“Instead, I will ask for a change in the alignment of the super-expressway project or try to come out with an alternative. For that, I will meet the chief minister and concerned officers,” Thackeray told reporters outside his official residence, Matoshree.
In 2017, however, the party seemingly did a volte-face on its previous stance. Eknath Shinde, then the public works department minister, claimed his party was “never against the Samruddhi Mahamarg” and “only wanted to protect farmer interest”.
With the date for the inauguration of the first phase of the project once again drawing near, Anil Parab, a leader of Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena said “it isn’t about credit” and “every government is working for it”.
“It was started during the BJP-Sena government. MVA took it forward and now during the BJP government is getting completed. So every government has contributed to it. The credit is not of one person but of the government,” Parab told ThePrint.
He admitted that it was a “landmark project” that would save travel time between Mumbai and Nagpur.
“But we feel that only Nagpur shouldn’t be developed but other villages and corridors that come along should also be hopefully developed,” Parab said.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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