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How Indian Highways are Numbered (New NH

Numbering System)?

12 Feb

(Just in case you are not aware of) the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways had taken the initiative of re-

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numbering most of the highways in India a couple of years ago. It was a minor news item in most dailies then but Ithought it’s a huge step towards rationalizing our road network names along with rebuilding the infrastructure. The

National road grid in India has been getting a good boost ever since our former Prime Minister Shri. Atal BehariVajpayee’s National highway development project (NHD) started materializing in stages.

Highway System in India

India at present (Feb 2013) has more than 200 national highways totaling to a length of 70,000+ kilometers which is

maintained by the NHAI (National Highway Authority of India)

The primary highway grid, as per Vajpayee’s dream project, consists of the following major stretches (picture below)supported by existing highways significantly enhanced:

The North-South Corridor stretches from Srinagar in J&K state to Kanyakumari – the southernmost tip of India.The length of this major road is 4000kms.

The East-West Corridor connects Porbandar in Gujarat with Silchar in Assam and the total length of this road being3300kms. (Wonder why they didn’t plan it till the boarder including Arunachal Pradesh!)

The Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) is the highway network connecting the four metros in India – i.e. Delhi, Mumbai,Chennai and Kolkata. The spin-offs of GQ also connects cities like Bangalore, Pune and Ahmedabad. The total lengthof GQ is 5846kms.

Most part of the above highways is 4-lanes while 6-laning project is being undertaken in many stretches.

Please note that the North-South and East-West corridors are often referred as ONE i.e. NS-EW corridor

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North-South and East-West Corridors

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The Golden Quadrilateral

(Image courtesy: Wikipedia – The boundaries shown here may not be the actual boundaries of India)

Highway Types in India

If you refer to Google map for driving, you must have noticed symbols like AH, NH and SH. The following are theexplanations for these respective codes.

1. National Highways (NH): These are major highways in India that provide connectivity to all cities and states. NHs are maintained by the Government of India (i.e. NHAI). As I mentioned earlier, National highways spans over 70,000 kms and even the NS-EW corridor and GQ are formed by many such highways.

2. State Highways (SH): State highways spans over 150,000kms in length and are managed by the state governmentsto provide accessibility and city/town inter-connectivity within each state.

3. Great Asian Highways (AH): Asian Highways are part of the cooperative project within Asian countries. While in principle, the National Highways in India themselves forms the AH stretch in India, it’s good to understand themfrom the map’s point of view. You will encounter many places in a map where the highway is referred to as an AsianHighway or AH. In reality though, there’s no separate road network for AHs but they consume the respective major highways in the participating countries to form the Asian Highway grid. You can read more about Asian Highways atWikipedia.

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How Indian Highways are Numbered?

Let us come to our main topic now. Until recently, the Indian highways were numbered in a very confusing manner that didn’t provide any logic behind their numbers. However, the Government of India took a major decision in 2010to rationalize the highway numbers in a way that the number provides some clue about the geographic location and

the direction of a particular highway.

Please refer to this circular by DORTH to know all the renumbering that took place.

The logic behind numbering is as follows:

1. All North-South highways will carry EVEN number2. All East-West highways will have ODD numbers

3. All major Highways will be single digit or double digit in number (Read the exception in point F)4. North-South highways will increase their numbers from East to West. For example, a particular North-

South highway in Central India or Western India will have a higher number than the one in East India. To bespecific, now you can guess that NH4 is somewhere in East India where as highway 44 may be towards thewest of India while both runs north-south due to the even numbering

5. Similarly East-West highways will increase their numbers as we move from North to South. By this logic NH1 will be running East-West somewhere in North India while NH 83 may be somewhere down south. Of course, there may be a minor confusion among some roads that may be running diagonally in stretches

6. THREE digit numbered highways are secondary routes or branches of a main highway. For example, 144,244, 344 etc will be the branches of the main National highway 44. Please note that since NH44 (NS Corridor)runs the length of the country from North to South a side shoot say 144 may be up north while something like944 may be down south

7. Suffixes A, B, C, D etc are added to the three digit sub highways to indicate very small spin-offs or stretches osub-highways. For example, 966A, 527B etc

So next time when you are driving based on the map or navigation device and when you see/hear something like‘Turn left to Old NH47’ you should remember that the particular highway is being re-numbered.

I am not sure when the numbering process will be complete but I sincerely hope that they introduce a lot of sign boards to avert any confusion. Also, like in the US and some western countries, it may help if they provide some clueabout which direction one is heading at any given moment. For example, 35W means a west bound highway. In Indiasince the major number (e.g. 35) corresponds to the direction itself, what the road signs or milestones should carry issomething like 35-W or 35-E, I think.

Picture References

Wikipedia has a nice picture showing all the re-numbered highways. Please refer to this image link .

For a magnified view of the National highway map in India, please refer to this link .

‘Highways for Life’ is indeed the punch line for India as well.

Comments 33 CommentsCategories AutomotiveAuthor Ajith Prasad Edassery

33 Responses to “How Indian Highways are Numbered (New NH Numbering System)?”

1.Vijay 08. Mar, 2013 at 10:34 pm #

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Very useful information. It’s complex web of road network

Reply

Ajith Prasad Edassery 19. Mar, 2013 at 10:08 pm #

Yes, Vijay but we should be happy that such a huge country is already reasonably well connected.

Reply

2.Sankar Dayal Murmu 10. Oct, 2013 at 4:40 pm #

Thanks sir for the valuable information regarding the Indian Roadways system..

Reply

Prasanna 13. Dec, 2013 at 4:50 pm #

Thanks for the info. But I am confused about NH-5.If your first point is correct i.e all N-5 highwaysshould be numbered as even ones,then how it’s numbered as 5(odd number) ? For your info NH-5 runsfrom kolkata to Chennai which I believe should come under N-S category.

Reply

Ajith Prasad Edassery 20. Dec, 2013 at 5:37 pm #

NH 5 is the old number for Kokata – Chennai highway. The new number is NH 16. There areseveral road signs still to be repainted. That’s a huge issue. Even I faced this issue during longdrives…

Reply

3.Loke 08. Apr, 2014 at 12:10 am #

Sooper!! Info very helpful was checking for AH and opened the link and got to know so many things…. Thank you Ajith sir :-)

Reply

4.anil bhatnagar 26. Jul, 2014 at 9:32 pm #

excellent information

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5.

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prithivirajan.m 29. Jul, 2014 at 7:36 am #

nice….as a civil engineer all the above informations are very helpful to me…thank u so much…:-)

Reply

6.Vijaya Saradhi 08. Sep, 2014 at 11:42 pm #

Very use full info.

Reply

7.Dinil 12. Sep, 2014 at 5:13 am #

Very Informative…

Reply

8.Venlugopal 18. Oct, 2014 at 5:13 pm #

Sir,The method in giving new nos is not scientific. It should have started no 1 from Golden quadrilateral, west toeast corridor, north to south corridor.

VenugopalRetired Road Engineer Govt of Andhrapradesh

Reply

9.Ramesh Maruti Sathe 12. Nov, 2014 at 5:35 pm #

Number for solapur pune hihway was nh9 but it is now 65Is there any change for nh13 solapur chitrdurga and 211 solapur dulhe?

Reply

Ajith Prasad Edassery 13. Nov, 2014 at 11:40 am #

NH13 is now NH169 as per web information. NH211 remains the same I think.

Reply

10.laxminarayan 23. Nov, 2014 at 9:26 am #

Yaa sir really tanx 4 this valuable infomation

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11.kaushal 25. Nov, 2014 at 11:07 am #

in para D above it is not correct that NH4 is in east . It is in west I often travel on NH 4 from pune to goe

Reply

Ajith Prasad Edassery 26. Nov, 2014 at 12:31 pm #

Kaushal, even I have traveled on NH4 many times. This highway number hasn’t changed yet, but it willsoon when the new numbering system is into effect on all highways. It should ideally get a bigger twodigit number.

Reply

12.Prashant Dandekar 24. Dec, 2014 at 12:14 pm #

Very Very deep and useful information

I have one questiondoes our country needs AH (Asian Highway Network) systemwhen our country have its own capable systemits really confusing to see NH and AH systems together I personally feel that ! its really not necessary to follow Asian Highway Network there may be some agreements in Asian Countries about thisthere should be only one Highway system exist to avoid confusion and overall developmentit should be either AH or NH

Reply

13. prasun 24. Jan, 2015 at 7:02 am #

This is very similar to the Interstate numbering system in US.

Reply

14.Yogeesh 04. Feb, 2015 at 5:43 pm #

Very useful information…. thanks!!

I have few clarifications…When are the new numbers commissioned?The old and new numbers are really confusing now.For Eg: When you travel from Bangalore to Pune/Mumbai on NH4, I could see many names like, NH4, NH48,AH48…

Is NH number and AH number different?

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Reply

15.Piyush Purushothaman 09. May, 2015 at 9:04 pm #

Thanks for the information it was very useful.

Keep it up!

Reply

16.Monika 08. Jun, 2015 at 10:12 am #

Very useful info..clearly mentioned points..thank you so much!!!

Reply

17.

MAHESWAR DEKA 02. Jul, 2015 at 5:31 pm #

Whenever one sees or walks or motors on a India’ national highways,one tends to lower his.her head beforeBajpayee, Indian ex Prime Minister.Minister. Bajpayee was a great thinker and for his great thinking, the

present day india’ highways have taken to days’ shape.

Reply

18.Sunil 06. Aug, 2015 at 12:01 pm #

Sir

svg file for indian highway numbering system.

Can you pls reupload the image files (the links seem to be broken)

Sunil

Reply

19.

AJAY SINGH 20. Sep, 2015 at 11:39 am #

ANY BODY HELP ME THAT BALLIA NOIDA HIGHWAY IN PROCESSING ?

Reply

20.R.Ravi 22. Sep, 2015 at 4:16 pm #

Thank you for this Important information as I was wondering from a few years as I saw the Old NH numberschanging and New ones coming up and the AH bit. It is very helpful Sir

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Reply

vikram Verma 04. Oct, 2015 at 1:03 am #

Please give the details about the national highways according to new highway number

Reply

21.Udaya Kumar P L 28. Sep, 2015 at 2:16 pm #

Excellent writeup !

Reply

22.Monika Yadav 05. Oct, 2015 at 7:10 pm #

Excellent information!!!

Reply

23.Parth Tokekar 05. Oct, 2015 at 10:28 pm #

Thank you sir for this important information.

Reply

s.Thangavelu 16. Oct, 2015 at 8:16 pm #

THIS IS VERY USEFUL FOR STUDENTS AND ALL OF US THANK YOU SIR

Reply

24.ombir tomar 19. Nov, 2015 at 10:57 pm #

sir ,nh7 is S-N highway.from varanasi to kannyakumari...but it is a odd no..??

Reply

Ajith Prasad Edassery 21. Nov, 2015 at 9:46 am #

It’s the old number. It’s proposed to change to NH44, the official process is not completed.

Reply

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25.deepesh 24. Nov, 2015 at 1:37 pm #

What’s the meaning of fraction numbering we often come across in road s in milestones and that too why somenumbers are written 2/4 instead of 1/2… Has is it anyway got anything to do with the distances betweenintermediate locations??

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