Nagpur: CM Devendra Fadnavis, during his budget speech on Friday, announced plans to connect the Samruddhi Expressway all the way to south Mumbai, in addition to the work-in-progress for connecting Gadchiroli to the super expressway. Once completed, Samruddhi will connect one extreme end of Maharashtra to the other and drastically reduce travel time. Currently, the Nagpur-Mumbai Samruddhi Expressway terminates at Aamne, which is around 70kms from Colaba in southern Mumbai. The budget proposed connecting south Mumbai to the expressway via Chheda Nagar and Anand Nagar, with the work targeted for completion by 2028. The route alignment, and whether it used a new dedicated corridor or tied into existing infrastructure was not specified during the speech. On the eastern end, the state govt is already moving ahead with plans to connect Samruddhi with Bhandara and Chandrapur apart from Gadchiroli. The Gadchiroli extension, once complete, would give the district — historically isolated due to difficult terrain and decades of Left-Wing Extremism — its first high-speed road connection to the rest of Maharashtra.Together, the 2 extensions would create an expressway spine running from Gadchiroli in the far east to south Mumbai, covering the full geographic breadth of the state. Gadchiroli and south Mumbai represent near-opposite ends of Maharashtra, both in terms of distance and development index, making the connectivity proposal one of the more ambitious infrastructure commitments in the budget. The budget also proposed a Tawa-Bharvir freight corridor to connect Vadhavan Port in Palghar with the Samruddhi Expressway, adding a logistics dimension to the expressway’s expanding network. The proposed corridor is expected to support faster movement of goods between the port and inland markets, and to reduce pressure on existing road networks. Officials did not provide further technical specifications, including land acquisition requirements, estimated costs, or timelines beyond the 2028 target for the south Mumbai link. The govt is expected to release additional information after detailed surveys and consultations with relevant agencies.
