Back in 2023, when I decided to drive from Malviya Nagar to Pushkar, I did not account for the scores of marble trucks on a road barely able to handle the traffic it saw. Scores of trucks and bottlenecks after bottlenecks waited for us in the first stretch—the Ajmer Road leading to Kishangarh. What was logically supposed to take an hour of driving became two. But when I return to the same route by the end of this year, I will, hopefully, be cruising down a six-lane highway.
The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) recently announced that it received nine bids from highway developers to upgrade around 90 km of NH-48 in Rajasthan from its current configuration to a six-lane semi-access-controlled highway. This is the first phase of the route you take from Jaipur if you drive to Pushkar, Ajmer, and even Udaipur.
The project was approved by the Government of India in February 2026 and is scheduled to be awarded within the current financial year itself, signalling that work could begin shortly after award.
It will be implemented on the Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) mode, meaning a single contractor takes end-to-end responsibility for design, build and commissioning.
What exactly will be built?
The EPC contract is not just about widening lanes. The project includes constructing flyovers and Vehicular Underpasses (VUPs) at major junctions to eliminate the conflict points that currently cause accidents and delays.
Critically, service roads and slip roads will be developed along the entire stretch, physically separating local and highway traffic. This measure will benefit residents of Kishangarh, one of India’s largest marble markets, where heavy goods vehicles and local commuters currently share the same road. This also means local shops can still thrive on the town traffic throughout the stretch.
"It is always dusty and dirty; please drive safely," I remember the chaiwala telling us, as he handed us matka tea at his roadside shack somewhere near Sawarda, almost halfway through the drive.
The payoff is expected to be significant. According to the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways, the travel time between Jaipur and Kishangarh will effectively be cut from the current two-plus hours to just around one hour.
A project that won't displace anyone
The highway ministry also stressed that the entire project will be implemented without any additional land acquisition. This presents a significant logistical advantage in the region, where land disputes are among the most common reasons for highway project delays.
No land acquisition means faster implementation and fewer legal hurdles before the start of the work. With nine competitive bids already on the table, the project appears to have strong private-sector interest.
The NHAI is yet to disclose who the winning bidder is, but locals around the region hope for a timely completion. This will not only benefit short-distance drivers to Pushkar and Ajmer, but also long-distance hauls to Udaipur and even Ahmedabad in the future.