The Union ministry of road transport and highways has sanctioned over ₹1,600 crore for the construction of a stretch of NH27, the principal highway that connects the Northeast and a major portion of north Bengal with the rest of the country.

On Tuesday, Union minister Nitin Gadkari said in a social media post that his ministry had approved ₹1,606.14 crore for upgrading NH31D, a part of NH27, and expanding it to a four-lane highway from Dhupguri in Jalpaiguri district to Falakata in Alipurduar district. The stretch has a length of around 30km.

NH27, which is also known as the East-West Corridor, is an ambitious project taken up over two decades ago as a part of the golden quadrilateral project to connect Porbandar in Gujarat with Silchar in Assam.

“Altogether, a 3,300km-long four-lane highway under the National Highway Development Project (NHP) will connect the west of India with the east and northeastern parts of the country. Most stretches of NH27 have been widened into four lanes but work along the stretch (from Dhupguri to Falakata) is yet to be completed,” said a source privy to the project.

The highway, which originates from Porbandar, moves through cities and towns like Rajkot, Samakhiali, Radhanpur, Kota, Jhansi, Kanpur, Lucknow, Ayodhya, Gorakhpur, Muzaffarpur Siliguri and Guwahati, and ends at Silchar.

Gadkari, who has announced the funds, said: “It will help in enhancing connectivity to North East India and bolstering India’s strategic advantage in the Chicken Neck Corridor. Additionally, the new road will shorten the travel distance by over 25 kilometres.”

The project, sources said, is strategically important as it moves through “chicken’s neck” or the Siliguri corridor, the slimmest part of the Indian sub-continent perched between Nepal in the north and Bangladesh in the south.

“The four-laning of this stretch will also reduce the travel time within north Bengal, say from Siliguri to Cooch Behar and Alipurduar, and also to the Northeast,” said Dipankar Ghosh, a Siliguri resident who often travels to these places.

Sikkim roads

The defence ministry has taken up the restoration of two prominent national highways — NH310A and NH310AG — which connect the northern parts of Sikkim, including the India-China border, with the state capital of Gangtok and the rest of the country.

In a recent communication made to Indra Hang Subba, the sole Lok Sabha member of the mountain state, a senior official of the ministry said the Border Roads Organisation (BRO), which functions under the ministry, had started restoring connectivity of both the highways.

The highways, which connect Gangtok with Mangan, the headquarters of the only district that is in the north of Sikkim, and also popular tourist destinations like Lachen, had suffered extensive damage in the GLOF (glacial lake outburst flood) that had devastated Sikkim in October last year.

In the letter to Subba, the official has also said the BRO needs complete support from the Sikkim government for the acquisition of land.