Times Of India showed Nitin Gadkari in a viral clip saying a Dubai prince once asked Narendra Modi to export him to Dubai for six months, as newly opened expressways showed damage soon after inauguration. The Delhi-Dehradun Expressway had large potholes and cracks three months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened it on April 14.
Delhi-Dehradun Expressway
The expressway was opened at a reported cost of about $1.258 billion, then developed visible damage within three months. A screenshot from a video by The Lallantop showed its condition four months after inauguration, turning a recent showcase project into a test of whether the road surface could hold up under the first monsoon rains.
India has built dozens of expressways and highways at enormous cost, but the roads have not survived the stress test of even the season's first rains. The damage is not limited to one corridor: the Kanpur-Lucknow Expressway caved in barely weeks after its inauguration, and repair works were launched to avoid embarrassment.
Kanpur-Lucknow Expressway
On another freshly built expressway, industrial electric fans were lined up to dry out waterlogged soil. On the Pune-Mumbai Expressway Missing Link, pothole-like patches appeared after the first waves of monsoon rain, and the project had been built at a cost of about $701.93 million.
Modi and Gadkari presented India's highway program as a success story, but several newly opened expressways showed potholes, cracks, or structural failures soon after opening. The Delhi-Mumbai Expressway has not escaped the monsoon stress test, and the pattern now reaches beyond one road into the wider national network.
NHAI and PNC Infratech
NHAI terminated a contractor's contract after repeated failures to meet contractual requirements, and it initiated proceedings to declare PNC Infratech a non-performing contractor after glaring lapses emerged in the construction quality of the Lucknow-Kanpur Expressway. For drivers, that means the immediate issue is no longer inauguration-day ribbon cutting but whether the finished surface can actually hold up once rain arrives.
The unanswered question now is whether the failures came from construction, supervision, or both. Until that is addressed, each new opening will be judged less by ceremony and more by whether it survives the first wet season intact.
