According to Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra Devendra Fadnavis, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will officially inaugurate the Mumbai-Nagpur Samruddhi Expressway on December 11. The Rs 492.5 billion expressway, which is 701 kilometres long, travels through 392 villages in 10 districts. The 500-kilometre route from Nagpur to Shirdi will be officially opened by the PM, and the remaining section would be finished in the next six months, according to the deputy chief minister. A six-lane, access-controlled highway called the Hindu Hrudaysamrat Balasaheb Thackeray Maharashtra Samruddhi Mahamarg is the second expressway in the state after the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. According to Fadnavis, a new economic corridor will be built along the expressway route, and 14 districts will be integrated and linked to the port via this expressway. “I feel that this expressway will bring 'samruddhi' (prosperity) to Vidarbha, Marathwada and the entire Maharashtra,” he added. The 701-kilometre-long Mumbai-Nagpur Expressway will connect the state's 10 districts (Nagpur, Wardha, Amravati, Washim, Buldhana, Jalna, Aurangabad, Nashik, Ahmednagar, and Thane), 26 talukas, and 392 villages. When completed, the expressway will cut travel time between Nagpur and Mumbai in half, from 16 to 8 hours. The BJP-Shiv Sena coalition government first announced the greenfield project in 2015. Land acquisition began in July 2017, Prime Minister Modi laid the foundation stone in December 2018, and construction work began in January 2019. The Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) model is being used to develop the project, which is being overseen by the government's infrastructure arm Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC). The MSRDC has raised debt for the project totaling Rs 280 billion. Afcons Infrastructure, Larsen & Toubro (L&T), and Reliance Infrastructure were among the 13 contractors hired to complete the construction of the 701 km long Mumbai-Nagpur Expressway, which was divided into 16 packages. The expressway project will likely cost a total of Rs 553.32 billion, including engineering and land acquisition. Eight of the 19 new towns that the MSRDC plans to build along the expressway have development plans already. Land acquisition for six of these eight new towns will be finished by June of the following year. Every township planned under Krushi Samruddhi Nagar's initiative is expected to be constructed on land measuring between 1000 and 1500 hectares. The new towns will act as economic hubs for a variety of industries, including food processing, integrated logistics, domestic food markets, educational institutions, skill-training programs, hospitals, and commercial and residential real estate. See also: Samruddhi Mahamarg's longest tunnel in Maharashtra is nearing completionSoon, Mumbai-Nagpur highway to be operational