Launch put off but new 22km Sohna highway opens on Gadkari’s word

Gurgaon/New Delhi: After uncertainty over its inauguration date, the new 22km, six-lane Sohna highway opened on Monday on the instructions of Union road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari, taking Delhi-NCR’s fast-expanding network of access-controlled signal-free roads to the extreme south of Gurgaon.
It is, technically, a trial run for now, till the road’s formal inauguration, but motorists don’t have to worry about that as they cruise to and from Sohna in around 20 minutes. One of the early birds was Sputh City resident Aneesh Das. “It looked like it would rain, so I thought of driving down to Damdama lake, taking this new highway. I had a great time cruising at 100kmph. Between Badshapur and Sohna chowk, you can also see the hills coming into view,” said Das.
Gadkari was scheduled to inaugurate the highway on Monday, but the event was called off, leading to speculation that the highway would be opened on a later date. Gadkari, however, asked the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to open the road for trials instead of waiting for a formal inauguration date.
So on Monday morning, as Gadkari posted about the Sohna highway on Twitter, the NHAI threw open Package-1 of the road – an 8.9km stretch from Rajiv Chowk to Badshapur. The other section, Package-2, had been opened on April 1. Elevated corridors comprise 7km of the road but these are fragmented, with the longest being 4km where the highway starts in Gurgaon.
Gadkari told TOI the road would be formally inaugurated later this month. “The Sohna national highway, including the elevated stretch, has been opened for trial run to bring relief to commuters. The formal inauguration will be on July 19. We did not want people to be deprived of a completed project for the sheer need of an official inauguration.”
He confirmed that the inauguration had been planned for Monday but had to be postponed as chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar and deputy CM Dushyant Chautala are abroad. “Since the road has been built for the public, we decided to start the trial run,” Gadkari said.
A senior NHAI official said the minister had sent word on Sunday itself that the highway should be opened.
The 22km highway will allow commuters moving from the city towards Sohna to avoid congested junctions such as Vatika Chowk within Gurgaon, cutting down commute time to a fourth of an hour it usually took. For those coming from Delhi, the road will give quick access not just to southern Gurgaon but also to Alwar in Rajasthan. Eventually, the highway will take commuters from the capital and Gurgaon to the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway — the 1,350km corridor that will link the two megapolises.
The project was originally planned with just one access point (Ghamroj) other than its entry and exit points, but the NHAI last month decided to add two more access points — one at Subhash Chowk and the other on Jail Road.
“For facilitating movement of local traffic, three lane-service roads have been constructed on both sides… This section would also provide connectivity to Delhi and Gurgaon through the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway,” Gadkari wrote in a tweet.
Construction for the project began in 2019 in two parts — the 8.9km Rajiv Chowk-Badshapur route, and the 12.7km stretch between Badshapur and Sohna. Building both sections cost nearly Rs 2,000 crore.
The road is elevated between Fazilpur Chowk and Badshapur (4km), near Alipur (1.8km) and GD Goenka University (1km). The highway also has a flyover and three underpasses.
For residents who have seen a long-drawn construction work and negotiated a maze of diversions as the highway gradually took shape, through pandemic delays and construction bans during winter months due to pollution, the completion of the highway meant relief. “It will help segregate traffic moving longer distances from commuters moving locally. It should reduce traffic on city roads,” said Santosh Behl, who lives on Sohna Road.
There was also concern, though, on its impact on city traffic in the populated stretches of Sohna Road, which have become constricted to accommodate the highway’s elevated stretch. “There is much more traffic on surface roads along this stretch that has many residential societies, offices and commercial spaces. The space available for vehicles catering to these areas has reduced,” said a resident.