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CAG’s Bharatmala Audit: What It Said About Nitin Gadkari’s Ministry

The CAG’s Bharatmala Phase-I audit reported progress through March 2023. Its cost figures cover different highway lengths, and its programme findings do not establish personal culpability by Nitin Gadkari.
From TheFinanceBase Team3 min to read
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The Comptroller and Auditor General’s Report No. 19 of 2023 audited the implementation of Bharatmala Pariyojana Phase-I, not Nitin Gadkari personally. It recorded progress and cost figures through 31 March 2023; those figures show that kilometres awarded and completed were well short of the programme’s approved length, while the cost figures compare different lengths of highway and cannot be read as a like-for-like overrun.

What did the CAG say about Bharatmala?

The CAG’s Performance Audit on Implementation of Phase-I of Bharatmala Pariyojana examined the programme under the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. The report was sent to government on 26 July 2023 and tabled on 10 August 2023. Its headline progress figures are a snapshot as of 31 March 2023, not a statement of the programme’s present status.

Measure as of 31 March 2023 CAG figure What it refers to
Phase-I length approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) 34,800 km The approved programme length
Length awarded 26,316 km, or 75.62% Highway length for which contracts had been awarded
Length completed 13,499 km, or 38.79% Completed length as a share of the approved 34,800 km

The CAG described the award figure this way: “As evident from the table and chart above, a total of 26,316 km of national highways length has been awarded under BPP-I till 31 March 2023, which was 75.62 per cent of the CCEA approved length for BPP-I.” The statement concerns programme progress, not an individual minister.

How much did the Bharatmala project cost, according to the CAG?

The report gives two figures that refer to different lengths of highway. The distinction matters before comparing them.

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Cost figure Length it covers Meaning
₹8,46,588 crore 26,316 km awarded by 31 March 2023 Sanctioned cost of the awarded length
₹5,35,000 crore 34,800 km approved for Phase-I CCEA-approved cost for the full approved length

Because the first amount applies to the awarded 26,316 km and the second to the entire approved 34,800 km, subtracting one from the other does not produce a like-for-like cost overrun. These figures alone do not establish the final cost of the whole programme or the eventual cost per kilometre.

How did awarding and construction progress change over time?

The CAG reported increases in both the daily pace of awarding highway length and the daily pace of construction across the periods it compared. Awarding and construction are separate measures, and the years shown are not the same for both comparisons.

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Activity Earlier period Later period Change reported by CAG
Highway length awarded 6.50 km/day in 2018–19 15.17 km/day in 2021–22 Higher daily award pace
Highway length constructed 1.04 km/day in 2018–19 12.37 km/day in 2022–23 Higher daily construction pace

The report discusses implementation during the pandemic period. The year-to-year figures provide context for changes in pace, but they do not by themselves explain every cause of delay or establish that awarding a contract translated immediately into completed road length.

Did the CAG accuse Nitin Gadkari personally?

No personal finding against Gadkari is established by the cited report. Report No. 19 of 2023 is a performance audit of a government programme implemented under the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. Describing it as an “indictment” of the minister goes beyond what these programme-level findings establish: the report’s reported figures are not, by themselves, a finding of personal culpability, criminality or wrongdoing by him.

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What does this audit establish—and what remains outside its scope?

The report establishes the CAG’s audited account of Bharatmala Phase-I implementation through its stated reporting date, including the approved, awarded and completed lengths and the corresponding cost figures. The figures show substantial progress against the programme plan alongside a gap between the approved length and what had been awarded or completed by 31 March 2023.

The material cited here does not provide a complete finding-by-finding ministry response or a full record of later corrective action. It therefore cannot answer whether each observation was accepted, contested or subsequently resolved. Nor should findings from other CAG reports be folded into this audit. CAG Report No. 12 of 2024 and Report No. 39 of 2025 contain separate NHAI observations; they are distinct reports and do not change what Report No. 19 of 2023 audited.

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