NHAI develops 25.54 km road in 18 hrs, Gadkari pats officials

Vijayapura: The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) has achieved a rare feat by completing a single lane of the four-lane stretch of 25.54 km being developed between Vijaypur-Solapur (NH 52) in a record time of 18 hours, Union Minister for Road Transport, Highways Nitin Gadkari said on his Twitter handle. "This quick work will be added to the Limca Book of Records. I congratulate workers and the project director of NHAI, other officials, representatives of the company," he said.

This road is part of the high density traffic corridor Bengaluru-Chitradurga-Vijayapura-Solapur-Aurangabad-Dhule-lndore-Gwalior.

According to Gadkari about 500 employees of the contractor company worked hard for this. "Along with these employees, I congratulate the National Highways Authority project manager, officials, all the representatives of the contractor company and the project officers," Gadkari said.

An official from the NHAI, on the condition of anonymity, told reporters that "In total 25.54 km of road asphalting work has been carried out in 18 hours. It is not done end-to-end but they have done it in five different places at the same time."

The official added that initially it was planned to take-up only blacktop work for a 20 km stretch of single lane in 12 hours but it was later extended for another 5.5 km on the same lane, which took another six hours to complete. The Solapur-Vijyapur highway was formerly known as the National Highway connecting Maharashtra and Karnataka. The bypass four lane road will be constructed between Solapur and Vijaypur. The route will also have six flyovers. "At present, work on 110 km of Solapur-Vijayapur Highway is in progress. The work will be completed by October 2021," Gadkari tweeted.