Nod for 17 infrastructure projects

The Prime Minister?s Office has approved 17 major infrastructure projects in the current fiscal year. These include the Mumbai elevated rail corridor, a major port, a greenfield airport in Navi Mumbai and locomotive projects. These projects have been identified by key infrastructure ministries and the progress will be monitored on a regular basis. Among the major road projects, Eastern Peripheral Expressway around Delhi will be awarded by end of this year while the two others – Mumbai-Vadodara and Delhi-Meerut – would be bid out by the end of March 2014. The highways ministry will also work on the financial model for the Delhi-Jaipur expressway for which the pre-feasibility report will be completed by mid August. The issue of whether financial bidding will be reissued for Mumbai elevated rail project will be resolved by railways very shortly and the project would be bid out by January next year. Similarly, the Greenfield port project in Durgarajapatnam in Andhra Pradesh would be awarded by March while government will bid for the Navi Mumbai airport by the end of January.