NEW DELHI: The 667-km Delhi-Amritsar-Katra Expressway will now be completed in phases till March 2028, with several stretches witnessing delays and some contracts being reserved and re-tendered, Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari informed Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.
The expressway linking Delhi to Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir is expected to reduce the distance between Delhi and Amritsar by about 40 km, reducing the travel time to Amritsar to about five hours and to Katra to about seven hours.
Gadkari said contracts for four stretches covering a total of 147.66 km have been booked and fresh bids have been invited to complete the work. These include Section 8 (35.09 km), Section 10 (39.5 km), Section 11 (43.02 km) and Section 2 Amritsar (30.05 km). The extensions are again being taken up through a new bidding process.
The longest delay is expected in the first part of Amritsar (16.9 km), which was earlier scheduled to be completed by April 2026 but is now likely to be completed only by March 2028, the minister said.
There is another major delay on Amritsar’s third section (28.07 km), where the completion timeline has shifted from October 2024 to February 2027. Among the main line extensions, the 15th section (35.15 km) will now be completed by October 2026 instead of September 2024.
Five extensions of the corridor have already been completed. These include Sections I (34 km), Section II (26.8 km), III (30.6 km), and Section IV (28.85 km) in Haryana, which was completed between December 2023 and January 2024, and Section VI (30.91 km) in Punjab, which had an early completion target of May 2024.
Several other departments are under construction with revised schedules. Section 5 (37.67 km) and Section 7 (36.94 km) are now expected to be completed by March 2026, while Section 9 (43.04 km) is likely to be completed by June 2026.
Sections 14 (44.6 km) and 16 (20.39 km), which were scheduled for September 2024, are now expected to be completed by June 2026. Section 17 (28.92 km) is likely to be completed by September 2026, section 18 (15.3 km) by August 2026, and section 12 (35.28 km) by February 2027, it said. Gadkari said.
