Soon you will be able to drive the 600 km distance from Delhi to Katra in 6 hrs!

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Soon you will be able to drive the 600 km distance from Delhi to Katra in 6 hrs!
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The highway connectivity to India’s prominent Hindu shrines is getting easier, thanks to PM Narendra Modi. Soon after the plan for highway connectivity for the coveted four Hindu religious shrines (Char Dham) in Uttarakhand has been finalised, the BJP led NDA government is planning an expressway between Delhi and Katra, the base for pilgrims going to Vaishno Devi in Jammu and Kashmir.
This expressway once operative would be 600 km long, the longest in India.

The expressway would pass through Haryana, Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir and would cost more than Rs 15,000 crore.
"A consultant to study the feasibility of the project is being appointed. It will significantly improve connectivity between Delhi and Srinagar as a national highway is already being built between Jammu and Srinagar," a senior government official revealed.

Road transport & highways minister Nitin Gadkari confirmed that his ministry was working on the plan.
Presently, travel time from Delhi to Katra is around 11-12 hours, which would be reduced to half once the expressway is built.
The government has approved plans for the construction of about 1,000 km of expressways at an estimated cost of Rs 16,680 crore. The approved corridors are Delhi-Chandigarh, Bengaluru-Chennai, Delhi-Jaipur, Delhi-Meerut, Kolkata-Dhanbad, Delhi-Agra and Vadodara-Mumbai.
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"It could be a hightraction project as the traffic flow, both private vehicles and freight, is good on the route," the official added.
While final meetings would be taking place soon, an official said, getting land wouldn’t be of problem as the states of Haryana, Punjab and J&K have BJP in power. The government is already working on a land pooling policy for expressway projects, where a portion of the land acquired from farmers will be returned to them after development.