40-metre-long crack appears on Nagpur-Mumbai Samruddhi Expressway

Maharashtra public works department minister Dada Bhuse on Thursday said cracks that had developed on the Nagpur-Mumbai Samruddhi Expressway near Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar have been repaired.

The 40-metre-long crack was detected near Fatiyabad village on chainage 443/650, a release from the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation said.

This crack is on the stretch of the expressway that was opened for traffic in December 2022, officials said, adding it was on the part of the carriageway that is laid at a height of three metres.

The crack, which developed as the side wall of the road sank a little, was filled using a chemical named 'epoxy material shalfix SC 40' and this 50-metre stretch will be laid once again through the contractor, the MSRDC release informed.

Talking to reporters, Bhuse said instructions have been given to officials to find out if there are more cracks along the 600-kilometre route of the expressway currently operational.

Incidentally, a video went viral during the day of a crater on the expressway in Sahapur in neighbouring Thane district. Traffic on the stretch between Shere Bere and Shendrun villages was affected for several hours due to this development.

Cracks have appeared within a year on the expressway, which was built at a cost of Rs 55,000 crore, due to corruption, Maharashtra Congress chief Nana Patole told reporters on the Vidhan Bhavan premises.

Only powers-that-be have prospered due to the construction of the expressway, which is being dubbed the highway of death due to the large number of accidents taking place on it, Patole claimed.

"Like the Samruddhi Mahamarg, we exposed cracks in the Rs 18,000 crore Atal Setu connecting Mumbai and Navi Mumbai. Cracks on Samruddhi and Atal Setu are a sign of how unreliable Prime Minister Narendra Modi's guarantee is," Patole quipped.