Cabinet Approves Four Rail And Road Projects Worth Rs 119.44 Billion

16 Mar 2026 CW Team

Cabinet has approved four infrastructure projects comprising two railway schemes and two road works at a combined cost of Rs 119.44 billion (bn). The projects were cleared to improve connectivity and freight movement in eastern and central regions.

The railway schemes consist of the Sainthia-Pakur fourth line covering an 81-km stretch and the Santragachi-Kharagpur fourth line, both located in West Bengal with parts extending into Jharkhand in the former case. Officials indicated that the Sainthia-Pakur route forms an important link on the Howrah-Guwahati and Howrah-Patna corridors while the Santragachi-Kharagpur scheme contributes to quadrupling on the Mumbai-Howrah and Howrah-Chennai high density routes. Together the two rail projects will add about 192 km to the existing network across five districts in the two states. They are expected to raise freight loading by 31 million tonnes (mn t) per annum and to ease congestion on key corridors.

The approved road schemes include the four-laning of the Badnawar-Timarwani section of National Highway 752D, which links central India to the western trade corridor by connecting NH 52 and the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway. The other road project funds construction of an elevated link to the Jewar International Airport from the Faridabad-Ballabhgarh-Sohna spur of the expressway. The Jewar connectivity project spans seven point eight km and intersects the Eastern Peripheral Expressway, the Yamuna Expressway and the Dedicated Freight Corridor.

Officials noted that the four-laning work on the Ujjain to Badnawar section has already been completed and that the new section will integrate with existing corridors to shorten transit times for goods traffic. The mix of rail and road investment is intended to bolster logistics efficiency, support industrial linkages and accommodate projected growth in freight volumes. Implementation timelines and detailed funding allocations were set out for monitoring and execution.

Infrastructure Transport

28 Apr 2026

Contracts, Corridors and Cash Flows

India’s roads sector enters 2026 at a decisive junction, where the conversation is no longer about kilometres alone but contracts that allocate risk wisely, corridors that unlock economic value, and cash flows that remain credible over the long term. After more than a decade of relentless expansion, India’s road-building ecosystem is moving into a phase of maturity – where engineering complexity, financial discipline and institutional coordination matter more than sheer scale.Between 2014 and 2024, India built highways at a pace few nations have ever matched. National Highway length expa..

The Walled Garden

I am not suggesting Indian architects are inadequate. The profession has produced extraordinary work – from Charles Correa's quiet humanism to Balkrishna Doshi's Nobel-recognised genius. However, the regulatory barriers meant to protect the profession are holding it back. It is time for an honest conversation about this.The Architects Act of 1972 established the Council of Architecture (COA) as the statutory body regulating architecture practice in India. Its founding logic was sound: to ensure those calling themselves architects meet a minimum standard of competence and to protect the publi..

We completed a 1BHK home on a private island in 7 days!

Reimagining construction through a ‘War on Waste’, Circato founders T Paul Koshy, Sushma Joseph and Praveen Crasta speak to CW on turning single-use plastic into high-performance building systems – demonstrated at Bengaluru International Airport with a 16-ft wall installed in just 48 hours.What specific gap in the construction ecosystem led to the creation of Circato?Sushma Joseph: We felt the industry had normalised inefficiency. In construction, timelines, costs and outcomes often remain uncertain, yet that is widely accepted. We wanted to show that inefficiencies can be..