With a view to significantly bring down pollution levels, the government has decided to adopt and implement in totality the automobile standards in developed countries, union minister for shipping, road transport and highways, Nitin Gadkari said at an ASSOCHAM event held in New Delhi recently.

"Yesterday itself we have decided to appoint a consultant to study all automobile standards for both fuel and vehicle in countries like Germany, France, UK, Sweden and implement it on the same lines in India," said Gadkari while inaugurating an ASSOCHAM conference, ‘India on cusp of logistics revolution.'

Talking about the need and scope for reforms in logistics sector, Gadkari said that though India has a total road length of about 52 lakh kilometres (kms), out of this national highways' length accounted for only 96,000 kms.

"About 40 per cent of country's total traffic was plying on two per cent roads thereby leading to problems like increase in pollution and accidents," he said.

"We had thus decided to increase national highways' length to two lakh kilometres and I am pleased to inform that till date we have declared 1.75 lakh kms of road-length as national highway and in next three years we plan to shift 80-85 per cent of country's total traffic on four per cent of national highways," added Gadkari.

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