News Mania Desk / Piyal Chatterjee / 13th December 2024
Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia stated on Friday that the infrastructure built in the last ten years is more than the work done during the previous regime’s 60-year tenure.
Scindia, Minister for Communications and Development of the North Eastern Region, told reporters that the administration, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has constructed infrastructure with an emphasis on quality, speed, quantity, and coverage.
“There has been a 180-degree change in the infrastructure after 2014. The Prime Minister dedicated 15 Airports in a single day on March 10. The speed of infrastructure development in the last 10 years has been unmatched, unseen and unprecedented. Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh did not get any airport in 65 years. Today Sikkim has an airport and there are four airports in Arunachal,” Scindia said.
He stated that during the previous regime’s 70-year tenure, there were 74 airports, which have been more than doubled to 157 under the Modi government, and fleets have expanded to roughly 750 from 400. “Infrastructure is critical to changing a developing nation into a developed nation. Scindia stated that every cent spent on infrastructure contributes 2.5 to 3 times more to GDP. The minister stated that budget allocations for road, railway, and aviation infrastructure had expanded dramatically during the last decade.
“There has been a 10-15 per cent increase in its (capital expenditure) every year. In 2013-14, the budget allocated for roads was about Rs 31,130 crore which has been increased significantly to Rs 2.7 lakh crore in 2024-25 which means 9 times increase,” Scindia said.
The minister said that a railway network equivalent to the size of that in Germany has been built in India in the last 10 years.
He said that the national highway network has increased to 150,000 kilometres from 91,000 kilometres. “Things that could not be done under the UPA regime, those things have been done by the NDA government under the leadership of the Prime Minister. A similar revolution we have seen in railways. There has been eight times growth in the budget,” Scindia said.
He stated that in 2014-15, the rate of road construction ranged from 12 to 37.8 kilometers per day, with the government aiming to boost it to 60 kilometers per day. The minister stated that thanks to a stronger road network, freight truck transit time has been cut by around 20%, resulting in an annual gain in savings of 4.8 lakh crore from 2.4 lakh crore previously, and that the government’s goal is to lower logistics costs by 9%.
