At Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, engineers, innovators, and infra-warriors drive off with national glory—minus the traffic jam.
New Delhi – While most award shows celebrate red carpets and paparazzi, the National Highways Excellence Awards 2023 (NHEA) rolled out the metaphorical tarmac to honour the real stars of India’s road revolution. Held at the iconic Bharat Mandapam, the sixth edition of NHEA was a fast lane festival of recognition, innovation, and enough high-vis jackets to make a reflective rainbow.
The event, graced by Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways, Shri Nitin Gadkari, along with Minister of State Shri Harsh Malhotra and NITI Aayog’s Dr. V.K. Saraswat, celebrated the engineers, concessionaires, and companies who quite literally build the road ahead for India.
Celebrating Excellence – With Curves, Gradients, and Grade Separators
From 125 tireless entries, only 22 made it past the inspection barrier, and five projects walked away with top honours in various categories. The awards included:
- PPP Project Management (Silver): H.G. Infra Engineering Ltd for crafting an economic corridor from Ateli Mandi to Narnaul, Haryana. Talk about building bridges—figuratively and literally.
- EPC Project Management (Silver): Bhartia Infra Projects got the nod for tackling the challenging terrain of NH-315A in Arunachal Pradesh. It’s not easy laying roads where GPS hesitates.
- O&M (Flexible) Gold: Nanguneri Kanyakumari Tollway Pvt Ltd earned their stripes for their smooth-sailing efforts on NH-7. Flexible roads, inflexible quality standards.
- Green Highways (Gold & Silver): Ashoka Buildcon Ltd and Deccan Tollways Ltd proved that sustainability doesn’t need speed bumps, with verdant victories in Telangana, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh.
Engineers Get Their Moment in the Sun (and Spotlight)
Proving that behind every smooth expressway is a sleepless civil engineer, the Best Engineer Award was conferred upon:
- Shri Navratan, DGM & PD, NHAI
- Shri Devender Kumar, GM, NHIDCL
- Shri Subhash Chandra, RO Itanagar, MoRTH
And in a feel-good twist, the Uralungal Labour Contract Co-operative Society (ULCCS) was given a standing ovation for blending transparency, quality, and social responsibility—essential ingredients for roadwork with soul.
Where Innovation Hits the On-Ramp
The Path Chintan Hackathon winners were also felicitated for their turbocharged ideas. These are the future minds making AI and road sensors smarter than half the drivers on Indian roads.
Speeches With Speed Limits of Wisdom
Minister Gadkari, never one to miss a chance to shift gears toward ambition, stated,
“Our goal is to raise the bar for quality, ownership & decision-making. With collective responsibility, we can hit global benchmarks—and perhaps even overtake them on the express lane.”
Shri Harsh Malhotra added a poetic turn:
“Our highways are not just roads—they’re the veins of Viksit Bharat 2047.”
MoRTH Secretary V. Umashankar took the scenic route, reminding the audience:
“What we lay today is not just concrete—it’s legacy.”
And NHAI Chairman Santosh Kumar Yadav underlined the importance of syncing stakeholders, so everyone’s journey leads to excellence—even if the GPS acts up.
Ideas in the Fast Lane
Panel discussions revved up thoughts on high-tech highway construction, developing roads in hilly terrains (where goats still hold right of way), and rating consultants who don’t just draft blueprints, but blueprint dreams. A special segment focused on India’s emergence as a global construction powerhouse—finally exporting more than just WhatsApp forwards.
Since its launch in 2018, the NHEA has paved the way—pun fully intended—for fostering healthy competition, promoting quality, and giving India’s road builders a well-deserved moment in the spotlight.
And if there were awards for event puns, National Highway Excellence Awards would win those too—because in the world of road-building, every milestone counts.
