In 2024–25, the National Highways Authority of India reported constructing 5,614 kilometres of national highways, exceeding its target of 5,150 kilometres. NHAI also reported provisional capital expenditure for the year above ₹2.5 lakh crore, including government budgetary support and its own resources. These are measures of a large building programme in operation, rather than projects awaiting a foundation stone. [1]
The release does not establish that all of the year’s expenditure paid for those completed kilometres. Dividing total annual capex by annual completions therefore does not establish a construction cost per kilometre. [1]
They are also more specific than the headline usually used to describe the highway expansion. The Road Transport Ministry’s December 2025 review placed the national-highway network at 1,46,560 kilometres, compared with 91,287 kilometres in 2014. That larger network is significant, but its growth is not a count of entirely new roads built on previously unused land. [2]
Three different lengths
The National Highways Act allows the Union government to declare an existing highway a national highway by notification. A change in designation can therefore change the size of the national network without creating the road itself. [3]
Construction figures, network length and lane-kilometres answer different questions. Widening a road adds capacity; building a new alignment creates a different physical asset; multiplying length by lanes measures another quantity again. Combining these measures can turn a defensible record of expansion into an exaggerated one.
The NHAI figure above also covers one implementing authority and one financial year. It should not be substituted for the entire ministry’s construction total or described as the annual increase in the network’s geographical length. [1]
Bharatmala carried forward earlier work
Bharatmala became a major vehicle for highway development, but the programme did not begin on an empty map. The ministry’s own review describes it as incorporating the earlier National Highways Development Project. Successive governments, public agencies, state authorities, contractors and workers contributed to the network on which subsequent expansion depended. [2]
The record also includes the CAG’s 2023 performance audit of Bharatmala Phase I. Its examination of 66 projects identified shortcomings across planning, financial management, project awards, execution and monitoring. The report recorded information that the implementing agencies had not supplied, including records for two selected projects. These findings concern the quality of implementation and the ability to scrutinise it. [4]
Construction and scrutiny belong in the same account. A completed kilometre has a cost, a specification and a place in a wider route. Its usefulness depends on whether adjoining sections connect, whether maintenance is effective and whether users can travel safely.
The expansion can be documented without treating every announced corridor as finished or every addition to the highway register as new construction. The stronger measure follows the physical work to the journey it enables—and then checks what was spent to provide it.