The minister said the highway is 93-94% complete and plans to travel from Mumbai to Goa by road in October to assess the remaining work.
At a function to open a 5.15km long elevated road that would bypass a congested stretch north of Panaji, Union road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari said he was “ashamed” of the delays around the expansion of the Mumbai-Goa Highway and had declared that he did not want to attend its inauguration when the project is finally completed.
“The Mumbai-Goa Highway has been hopelessly delayed, and the contractors have failed. From my point of view, what has happened is very unfortunate. My department has as many as seven world records, but now I wish my department will have the record for blacklisting and debarring the single largest number of contractors and suspension of officials in a single year,” Gadkari said at an event to inaugurate the 6-lane Porvorim flyover.
“Now I’ve given up waiting for an auspicious time (to have it inaugurated). I’ve decided that I will not go for the inauguration of the Mumbai-Goa highway because I’m ashamed at the delays,” he said.
Minister says highway completion is near
Gadkari, however, held out hope that the project completion was round the corner.
“Yesterday I had a meeting and was told the highway was 93-94% complete… and in October, I’ll get off at the Mumbai airport and come to Goa by car to see the status of the completion,” he said.
The project to convert the old two-lane Mumbai-Goa highway into a four-lane road was launched in 2011, with the objective of reducing the travel time from nearly 12 hours to six hours.
But work on several crucial stretches of the highway has stalled for a prolonged duration. Also, there have been concerns about construction quality on social media after images of damage on some stretches.
The elevated corridor that Gadkari opened on Wednesday runs through the Porvorim suburb north of the state capital and had been on the drawing board for more than seven years. Work on the ground started in January 2024.
