""National Highway"", is the class of roads maintained by the Central Government in India and is the main long-distance roadways. The NH's constitute about 58,000 km, ie around 2% of the total road network in India, but carrries nearly 40 % of the total road traffic. The recently passed National Highways (Amendment) Bill, 1995, provides for private investment in the building and maintenance of these arteries of India. In the recent past, a number of new roads have been classified as NH's in a move to provide national connectivity to even remote places. In the recent past, a number of bypasses have been constructed for big and small towns and cities to provide uninterrupted passage for highway traffic. The varied climatic, demographic and traffic situation prevents these highways from having a uniform character. These may be six laned in some parts, to even non-metalled stretches in remote places. Many NH's are still under upgradation or even construction. There are long NH's to connect the metros together, as well as short shoots off the highway to give connectivity to the nearby ports or harbours. The longest NH is the NH7 which goes all the way from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh to Kanyakumari at the southern most point of the Indian mainland, in Tamil Nadu covering a distance of 2369 km, and passing through the metros like Jabalpur, Nagpur, Hyderabad and Bangalore. The shortest NH is the NH47A, which is a 6 km stretch to the Ernakulam - Kochi Port.

External link

National Highway Authority of India[1] (http://www.nhai.org)