Mumbai: In 2022, ahead of the inauguration of the first phase of the Mumbai-Nagpur Expressway, Devendra Fadnavis and Eknath Shinde did a little test drive. Fadnavis took the wheel and Shinde was his pillion rider. Shinde was the chief minister then, and Fadnavis, the deputy CM.
On Thursday, as the final phase of the 701-km expressway opened for traffic, the leaders did a test-drive once again. In the first run Thursday, Shinde took the wheel. Afterwards, Fadnavis sat at the wheel, with his two deputies, Shinde and Ajit Pawar, riding pillion.
This sequence of different leaders taking the driver’s seat at different times—first, Fadnavis in 2022; then Shinde; and eventually, Fadnavis again Thursday—is almost telling of how the project took shape.
The six-lane, access-controlled Mumbai-Nagpur expressway project promises to cut the 16-hour journey between the two cities in half. It was Fadnavis’s pet project, conceived during his first term as CM from 2014 to 2019. Shinde was then the minister for the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC), the government agency that implemented the project. So, Shinde was literally in the pillion seat driving the project next to Fadnavis.
The road, built at a cost of Rs 55,332 crore, eventually started nearing completion when Shinde was the CM and Fadnavis the deputy CM. The first three phases were inaugurated under then-CM Shinde—first, a 520-km stretch between Nagpur and Shirdi in December 2022, then an 80-km stretch between Shirdi to Bharvir in Nashik in May 2023, and the third phase between Bharvir and Igatpuri in March 2024, just ahead of the Lok Sabha elections last year.
“All three of us can drive well. We drive in shifts through the day,” CM Fadnavis joked before taking the wheel Thursday during the inauguration of the last phase. Officially known as Hindu Hrudaysamrat Balasaheb Thackeray Maharashtra Samruddhi Mahamarg, it connects Igatpuri in Nashik to Amane in Thane.
Later, speaking about the project, Fadnavis said, “People thought we were only making announcements, but we have completed the project in record time … This is an economic corridor, which will contribute to the prosperity of Maharashtra, with significant industrial development and boost tourism along its route.”
Also Read: Solo or together? The big question for Maharashtra alliances this BMC poll season
The final & most challenging phase
The fourth phase, from Igatpuri to Amne near Thane, was the most challenging section of the Mumbai-Nagpur expressway. It had to cut across several hilly areas and valleys that lie between the Nashik and Thane districts. As a result, the design involved building a number of viaducts and tunnels in this section.
The location of Thursday’s inauguration function was also carefully chosen to help the Fadnavis-led Mahayuti government—comprising the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)— further flex its muscle.
The function took place inside one of the project’s six twin tunnels—8 km in length—which has been touted as the longest tunnel in the state and among the longest in the country.
“We will break our own record soon when we inaugurate the missing link project on the Mumbai-Pune expressway—which will then be the longest tunnel in the state—but right now, this tunnel, the one we are all sitting in, is the longest,” Fadnavis said.
The "Samruddhi" Expressway of Maharashtra – A Dream Fulfilled!
In my eyes, the dream of a prosperous Maharashtra was always alive…
Today, I was elated to inaugurate the last phase of 'Hinduhrudaysamrat Balasaheb Thackeray Maharashtra Samruddhi Mahamarg' (Igatpuri to Amne,… https://t.co/QAk9EomfxI pic.twitter.com/8EgWrzSYat
— Devendra Fadnavis (@Dev_Fadnavis) June 5, 2025
That tunnel, which the MSRDC is implementing as part of the Mumbai-Pune missing link project, is expected to be ready by this year. It will be 8.9 km in length.
In the same breath, CM Fadnavis vowed to complete another mega expressway soon—Shaktipeeth—which, as the longest tunnel in the country, will then break the previous two records.
The Shaktipeeth Expressway, an 802-km road proposed to link Nagpur and Goa, was put on the back burner ahead of the Maharashtra assembly polls last year due to stringent opposition in the Kolhapur district.
The Mumbai-Nagpur expressway
When Fadnavis, an MLA from the Nagpur South West constituency, first announced his intention of building an expressway between Mumbai and Nagpur during the monsoon session of the legislature in 2015, he set a very ambitious deadline for the project. He wanted to inaugurate it by 2019, before the end of his tenure as CM.
However, the project faced delays, first due to opposition to land acquisition, and, later, due to the COVID-19 pandemic that hit in March 2020.
The MSRDC needed to acquire more than 8,800 hectares for the expressway from nearly 24,000 farmers across 10 districts through which the expressway was planned. Initially, the then Fadnavis-led government faced resistance from its ally, the undivided Shiv Sena, which backed the farmers opposing the project.
The Fadnavis government then came up with a special scheme of creating a land pool through voluntary participation and land acquisition using the Land Acquisition Act, 2013. The Maharashtra government enticed the farmers into participation in the project by offering as much as five times the market value of the land along the stretch. The MSRDC, thereafter, wrapped up land acquisition within 18 months.
Construction started in January 2019.
The Mumbai-Nagpur expressway is equipped with several over-bridges and underpasses for the safe movement of animals along the way. Under the MSRDC, the project has been enabled to produce solar energy of nearly 500 MegaWatts.
The expressway directly connects districts such as Nagpur, Wardha, Amravati, Washim, Buldhana, Aurangabad, Jalna, Ahmednagar, Nashik and Thane.
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
Also Read: Not Noddy, Tom & Pingu, but ‘Adu, Sanju & Teju’—BJP wants Mumbaikar penguins to have Marathi names