Mumbai-Goa highway project cost rises 48 per cent to Rs 16,909 crore in 17 years

Crater-ridden stretches on the Mumbai-Goa highway. Pics/By Special Arrangement

If there is one road project that has tested the patience - and pockets - of Maharashtra's motorists, it is the Mumbai-Goa highway. Latest figures reveal a Rs 5420-crore cost escalation in the 17-year-old Mumbai-Goa highway widening project. As per the reply received by RTI activist Jeetendra Ghadge, the sanctioned cost of 10 four-laning packages covering 355 km of NH-66 in Maharashtra has risen from Rs 11,489.14 crore to Rs 16,909.22 crore - a 48 per cent increase.

The Parshuram Ghat-Arawali stretch has recorded the steepest rise, with its cost jumping 126 per cent, from Rs 983 crore to Rs 2226 crore. Cumulative expenditure has already reached R11,577 crore, exceeding the project's original sanctioned budget, despite several stretches remaining incomplete. During Ganeshotsav, journeys that should take seven hours often stretch beyond 12 hours.

As per figures, the combined expenditure reported against these 10 stretches, across the 466-km old highway between Mumbai and Goa, is about R14,577.4 crore. "The government has treated Konkan's lifeline as an ATM for endless cost revisions with no accountability. What is deeply disturbing is that the Mumbai-Goa highway has been treated differently from several other major national highway projects. While NHAI is executing the Panvel-Indapur stretch, the remaining Maharashtra portion has been entrusted to the state PWD for execution, with the projects being implemented under the national highway programme. When a project of this scale has remained incomplete for over 17 years despite thousands of crores being sanctioned and spent, the government must answer a basic question: who is ultimately accountable for the delay? The fact that the executing responsibility and financial administration are spread across different agencies cannot become an excuse for the commuters to continue paying the price in the form of accidents where hundreds of lives have been lost, along with congestion and endless travel hardship," said Ghadge.

Drastic escalation

The numbers become particularly striking when the original and revised project costs are placed side by side. While the total of original total project costs (TPC) of 10 stretches comes to R11,489.14 crore, the sum of revised TPC for the same is Rs 16,909.223 crore. The difference amount is a staggering Rs 5,420.083 crore.

Tragic incidents

According to published reports, at least 14 people have died in 2026 on the Mumbai-Goa highway in at least six accidents. For motorists who have spent years negotiating diversions, unfinished stretches and construction bottlenecks along the highway, the figures raise an obvious question: how much more public money will be required before the promised four-laning of the highway becomes a seamless reality?

[popcorn number="466 km" desc="Length of the old Mumbai-Goa highway" class="Default"]

TravellersSpeak

Sakshi Patil,
‘I travel on the Mumbai-Goa highway frequently to visit my native place in Raigad, and every trip feels like the same story - diversions, unfinished work, and traffic jams. Now we are seeing figures of thousands of crores being spent and the project cost going up by thousands of crores more. As a taxpayer and a regular user of this road, I want to know where all this money is going'

Prajakta Kadam,
‘For women travelling with children or elderly parents, these long journeys are particularly exhausting. We leave Mumbai expecting the highway to make the journey faster, but construction zones and diversions keep adding to the travel time. If the cost of the project has gone up so dramatically, the authorities owe commuters an explanation for the delays and repeated cost revisions'

Azgar Sayyed,
‘Every time I drive to Konkan, I have to factor in extra hours because of diversions and unfinished stretches. What frustrates me most is that the cost keeps increasing while commuters continue to face the same problems. If nearly Rs 11,500 crore has already been spent on these packages, people have every right to ask what has been achieved on the ground and who is accountable for the escalation'

Rajesh Sawant,
‘I have been using this highway to travel to my home town in Sindhudurg for years, and we have heard promises about its completion for years too. Now the government's own figures show that the revised cost of these packages has crossed R16,900 crore. Before asking for more money, the authorities should tell us why the original estimates were so far off and when commuters will actually get the highway they were promised'