The six-lane conversion of the 67-km Rajkot-Jetpur highway, launched by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) in August 2022 with a two-year completion target, now carries a revised deadline of June 2027, according to DeshGujarat. That is the project’s third publicly reported deadline shift, after an earlier revision pushed completion to September 2025 and then to January 2027, per Swarajya.
What has gone wrong
Two separate obstructions sit behind the slippage. Swarajya reports that shifting the Bhadar Yojana water pipeline, operated by Rajkot Municipal Corporation, has held up work on the Aji-Khokhadad stretch, with officials estimating the pipeline relocation alone could take close to a year. DeshGujarat points to a later addition to the scope: approval for an elevated overpass at Korat Chowk near Rajkot required extra construction that was not in the original plan. As of December 2025, Swarajya put overall project completion at 52%, with roughly a third of the highway’s bridges finished and the rest under construction. The project’s cost has also grown, from an original estimate of about ₹1,200 crore to roughly ₹1,500 crore.
None of this is unusual for large Indian highway projects, which routinely run into utility-shifting delays, land disputes and scope changes. What sets this stretch apart is how long the gap between promise and delivery has grown: a project pitched in 2022 as a two-year job is now tracking closer to five years.
What it means for commuters
The corridor carries an estimated 25,000 vehicles a day and serves roughly 2.5 lakh daily commuters between Rajkot and Jetpur and the towns along the route. Swarajya reports that journey times have stretched from about 90 minutes before construction began to 3-4 hours now, as traffic navigates diversions, active work zones and stretches of poor road surface. NHAI has offered a 25% toll concession to motorists on the corridor, but two toll plazas within a 35-km span continue to collect fares despite the construction disruption, a point that has drawn local frustration over paying near-full price for a road that is not finished.
For businesses and farm producers who rely on this stretch to move goods between Saurashtra’s interior and Rajkot’s markets, the extended construction period is a recurring cost: longer transit times, higher fuel use and unpredictable delivery windows that a finished six-lane highway was supposed to fix years ago.
Outlook
NHAI’s original pitch for the project cited an eventual one-hour travel time between Rajkot and Jetpur, daily fuel savings of about ₹45 lakh, and a large cut in wasted man-hours once complete. Those benefits remain on paper until the outstanding bridges and the Aji-Khokhadad stretch clear. With the pipeline relocation alone estimated to take up to a year, the June 2027 date will be worth revisiting well before it arrives, given the project’s track record of slipping past its own revised targets.
Sources: DeshGujarat, Swarajya
This report was compiled and written with AI assistance from publicly reported sources, and reviewed for accuracy.