NEW DELHI, October 6 — The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) on Tuesday accorded formal administrative and financial sanction of ₹12,800 crore for four-laning high-density strategic highway corridors spanning Assam, Meghalaya, and Arunachal Pradesh under the Prime Minister's Development Initiative for North-East Region (PM-DevINE) and Bharatmala Pariyojana framework.
The sanctioned infrastructure package covers over 420 kilometres of critical arterial routes designed to eliminate perennial logistics bottlenecks and integrate remote border staging areas with major economic consumption nodes. Engineering specifications incorporate modern slope-stabilization technologies, all-weather reinforced tunnels designed to withstand high seismic activity (Zone V), and heavy-load continuous-span bridges over the Brahmaputra and associated Himalayan river basins.
Ministerial briefings underscored that this multi-state corridor upgrade directly advances the Centre's 'Act East' maritime-terrestrial trade interface, providing robust domestic logistics corridors connected with multimodal transit routes towards Bangladesh and Southeast Asian trade networks. Contracts will be executed under the Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) model with stringent quality compliance oversight from the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL).
Infrastructure planning in border regions, the PM-DevINE financing mechanism, the North Eastern Council (NEC), and NHIDCL operational mandates are vital topics in the UPSC Civil Services General Studies (Paper III: Infrastructure and Security) and State PCS examinations. Aspirants should note that PM-DevINE is a 100 percent Central Sector Scheme announced in Union Budget 2022-23, administered through the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (MDoNER) to fund infrastructure and social development projects without state co-funding requirements.