By IANS,
Panipat : The longest flyover on India’s national highway network has been opened to traffic in the industrial city of Panipat in Haryana, 100 km from the national capital.
The 10-km long overpass on the National Highway (NH)-1 (earlier called Grand Trunk road), one of the busiest highway stretches in the country, was inaugurated Wednesday by Union Minister for Road Transport, Highways and Shipping T.R. Baalu and Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.
The nearly Rs.4 billion flyover, built by Larsen and Toubro, will bisect Panipat. Motorists driving to and from Delhi to north Indian states of Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir will no longer have to face traffic bottlenecks in the congested city.
Though the flyover had been completed over a month back – much ahead of its schedule of January 2009 – it was not opened to the public as the authorities kept waiting to get a date from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to inaugurate it.
The Punjab and Haryana High Court in Chandigarh had to intervene to direct officials of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to get the flyover opened.
Motorists will have to pay a toll to use the elevated highway but it will make the journey to and from Delhi a lot smoother and faster.