The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Wednesday (1 July) approved a six-lane road tunnel under NH-148AE that will link the Dwarka Expressway in West Delhi directly with Nelson Mandela Marg at Vasant Kunj — a corridor that has long been one of the capital’s most congested chokepoints.
The project carries a total capital cost of Rs 6,969.67 crore and will be executed under the Hybrid Annuity Mode (HAM) framework of the NH (O) scheme.
What is being built
At its core is a twin-tube tunnel, to be bored using Tunnel Boring Machines, running 3.14 km beneath the Rangpuri section of the Southern Ridge — 1.98 km of it underground below the protected forest, which the project claims to preserve from surface disruption.
The tunnel will originate at the Shivmurti Interchange on the Dwarka Expressway and terminate just before the intersection of Nelson Mandela Marg and Mahipalpur Chhatarpur Road.
Total project length, factoring in the tunnel approach ramp (0.98 km), an approach section with RE wall (0.554 km), elevated portions (2.556 km), and at-grade road (0.87 km), comes to 8.1 km.
To manage congestion at the Nelson Mandela Marg exit, the plan also includes a 1.8 km elevated road, an additional flyover from Chhatarpur towards Mahipalpur, and an elevated U-turn for right-turn traffic.
The tunnel is designed to absorb traffic from Gurugram, Dwarka, the IGI Airport, and West Delhi heading towards South Delhi — a demand that currently has no direct grade-separated solution.
It connects into the UER-2/Dwarka Expressway on one end and Vasant Kunj on the other.
The National Highways Authority of India is separately proposing an elevated corridor between AIIMS and Mahipalpur that would serve as a bridge connecting the tunnel to the Barapullah elevated road — effectively stringing together West, South, and East Delhi, and extending the network’s reach to Ghaziabad and NOIDA.
Employment and economic projections
The government estimates that each lane-kilometre of National Highway construction generates roughly 264 person-days of direct employment and 55 person-days of indirect employment daily.
On that basis, the project is expected to yield approximately 7.54 lakh person-days of direct employment and 9.80 lakh person-days of indirect employment over its construction lifecycle.
