The government told Parliament that 629 of the 1,191 National Highway (NH) projects currently under construction have exceeded their original completion schedules, representing more than half of the ongoing works. The Union Road Transport and Highways Minister conveyed the figure in a written reply and did not provide detailed reasons for the delays. In a separate reply the minister said 103 contractors and concessionaires were blacklisted or penalised for poor quality work between 2023-24 and 2025-26, reflecting stronger enforcement measures in project execution. Officials also identified 6,358 black corridors based on accident data from the Electronic Detailed Accident Report (e-DAR) for 2023 to 2025, using artificial intelligence (AI)-based tools to flag continuous stretches meeting black spot criteria. The corridors were described as stretches where a specified number of fatal and grievous injury accidents have occurred. The ministry has adopted a phased roadmap to deploy Advanced Traffic Management Systems (ATMS) across all four-lane and above National Highways and Expressways, covering 52,647 kilometres, and to establish local, regional and national command and control centres for centralised monitoring and incident management. A Unified ATMS Software Platform is being implemented to ensure interoperability, scalability and uniform service delivery across the National Highway network through standardised protocols for monitoring, enforcement, data integration and performance management. The move is intended to improve traffic analytics and coordinated response. On the FASTag-based Annual Pass scheme the minister said the facility for non-commercial cars, jeeps and vans came into effect on August 15, 2025 and allows users to activate an annual pass for Rs 3,075 for 2026-27. The pass permits travel through all National Highway and National Expressway toll plazas for one year or up to 200 toll plaza crossings, whichever is earlier, and as of June 2026 more than seven point seven million (mn) Annual Passes have been issued, registering 630 mn transactions at National Highway fee plazas. Annual Pass transactions currently account for around 33 per cent of all electronic toll collection (ETC) transactions by cars, jeeps and vans.