Synopsis

Many national highway projects are delayed beyond their original completion schedules. Over 100 contractors faced blacklisting for poor quality highway construction work. Advanced traffic management systems will be deployed across major national highways. Black corridors with high accident rates have been identified using AI tools. FASTag annual passes for cars have seen significant uptake and transactions.

As many as 629 national highway projects have missed their original completion schedule among the total 1,191 under-construction project (Representational Image)

New Delhi: As many as 629 national highway projects have missed their original completion schedule among the total 1,191 under-construction projects, Parliament was informed on Wednesday.

In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said that currently 1,191 National Highway (NH) projects are under construction without attaining any of the various stages of project completion.

"Of these, 629 projects have spilled beyond their original completion schedule," the minister stated without assigning any reason for the delay.

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In a separate reply, the minister said that from 2023-24 to 2025-26, 103 contractor/concessionaire were blacklisted/penalised for poor quality work in the execution of national highway construction work execution.

Responding to a separate question, Gadkari said the government has adopted a phased roadmap for deployment of advanced traffic management systems (ATMS) across all four-lane and above National Highways and Expressways (about 52,647 km).

The roadmap includes establishment of Local, Regional, and National Command and Control Centres for centralised monitoring, incident management, traffic analytics, and coordinated response, he added.

The road transport and highways minister said to ensure interoperability, scalability, and uniform service delivery across the National Highway network, a Unified ATMS Software Platform is being implemented with standardised protocols for monitoring, enforcement, data integration, and performance management.

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Responding to another question, Gadkari said based on the available accident data from Electronic Detailed Accident Report (e-DAR) for the period 2023-2025, total number of 6,358 Black corridors have been identified.

Certain segments on National Highways (NHs) have been identified as black corridors which are continuous stretches qualifying the criteria of black spots i.e. locations with occurrence of certain number of accidents involving fatalities and grievous injuries.

These black corridors have been identified in real time through AI-based tools.

To a separate query, he said the government has introduced a FASTag-based Annual Pass for non-commercial cars, jeeps, and vans, which has come into effect from 15th August, 2025.

Under this scheme, an Annual Pass can be activated on payment of Rs 3,075/- for the year 2026-27 and allows travel through all National Highway/National Expressway fee plazas for one year or upto 200 fee plaza crossings, whichever is earlier.

"As of June, 2026, more than 77 lakh Annual Passes have been issued registering 63 crore transactions on National Highway Fee Plazas," Gadkari said, adding that presently, around 33 per cent of total Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) transactions done by car/jeep/van are Annual Pass Transactions.