NHIDCL Denies Responsibility for Stalled Brahmaputra Express Highway

Guwahati: The National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited just killed hope for a massive Assam transport project. The agency confirmed the Brahmaputra Express Highway falls outside its authority. This leaves a decade-old plan in complete limbo. Silence surrounds the state of the long-promised road.

Parag Dutta, a Dibrugarh resident, pushed the Prime Minister’s Office for answers on June 26, 2026. He noted the project remains frozen since its 2017 start. Then Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal kicked off the preliminary survey at the DTP dyke on January 24, 2017. The highway was designed to stretch from Sadiya to Dhubri along the southern riverbank to boost tourism and stop erosion. Nine years have passed since that survey. No work has started.

Dutta compared the stalled road to other projects like the underwater tunnel between Gohpur and Numaligarh that actually progressed. The PMO logged his complaint on July 3, 2026, and shifted it to the CPGRAMS portal. The NHIDCL regional office in Guwahati eventually weighed in on July 31, 2026. General Manager Binayak Kumar signed the response stating the route "is not envisaged" under their mandate.

The agency provided no info on whether the project is scrapped, renamed, or combined with other works. Residents in Upper Assam now face the reality that a major infrastructure promise has effectively vanished. The project remains stuck at the survey stage.