Morbi Six-Lane Highway: Rs 1,182 Crore Sanctioned for NH-151A Port Link

The Centre has sanctioned Rs 1,182.40 crore to widen a 24.51 km stretch of NH-151A in Gujarat’s Morbi district to six lanes. The road runs between Maliya and Pipaliya and links the Amritsar-Jamnagar Economic Corridor to Navlakhi port. For a road contractor, the number to look at is the structures list. It turns a widening into a concrete and bridging job.

What was sanctioned

Union road transport minister Nitin Gadkari announced the sanction on social media, and Patrika and Jaipur Times both reported it on 13 November with the same length, cost and structures list. Gadkari said the road is two-lane today and congested. Both reports say it should speed up freight to and from Navlakhi port and help move petroleum and petrochemical products from two large refineries to the northern states. Neither report gives a contract mode, a contractor or a completion date.

Does this change what a contractor in Saurashtra should buy?

Start with the rate. Rs 48 crore a km is more than twice the roughly Rs 21 crore a km of the Bilaspur-Kulana four-lane sanction in Haryana, which also carried one flyover. The gap is the structures. Six structures on 24.51 km is one about every 4 km, and two of them are railway overbridges. Add a new bypass and a concrete service road, and a good part of this money goes on foundations, girders and concrete rather than pavement.

That splits the fleet in two. The widening and bypass need the usual earthwork and paving train: excavators, tippers, motor graders, soil and tandem compactors and a paver. The structures need piling rigs, a batching plant, transit mixers and a mobile crane. Railway overbridges are built in the railway’s traffic blocks over live track, so girder lifting is a short, heavy hire, not a reason to buy a big crane. The concrete service road keeps transit mixers busy for longer than on a bitumen-only job.

Our reading: owners of compaction and concrete plant in the Morbi and Rajkot belt should expect steady local demand once a contractor mobilises. The Maliya end is low-lying country near the coast, so the bypass is likely to need embankment fill, which means long tipper runs from borrow areas. That is our inference; no alignment or soil data has been published. More of the road-building fleet is covered in our road construction equipment guide.

One open question matters for hire planning. NHAI has already listed a 2026 tender for this missing link, and we found no published winner. Until a letter of award names the contractor, nobody can say whose fleet arrives or when.

FAQ

How much is the Morbi six-lane highway project worth?

Rs 1,182.40 crore for 24.51 km of NH-151A between Maliya and Pipaliya, according to the minister’s announcement as reported by Patrika and Jaipur Times.

Who will build the Maliya-Pipaliya road?

No contractor has been named. NHAI has listed a tender for the stretch, and the award has not been published.

Why does it cost Rs 48 crore a km?

The scope includes a bypass, a concrete service road, a flyover, three underpasses and two railway overbridges, on top of widening from two lanes to six.

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Source: Patrika

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