City-based infrastructure player IJM India, a subsidiary of Malaysia’s IJM Construction Berhad, on Saturday said it has set a new record by laying 25.54 lane-kilometres (12.77 km) of the Solapur-Bijapur section of the four-lane National Highway-13 in just 17 hours and 45 minutes.

The company now has its fingers crossed that this feat, which is a first for a national highway project in the country, will pave the way for its entry into the Limca Book of Records.

Even Union minister of road transport and highways Nitin Gadkari tweeted about the accomplishment.

IJMII team leader for the project M Venkateswar Rao said the task involved huge logistical and technical challenges covering an approximate linear distance of 18,701 km in less than 18 hours by all the vehicles involved in the feat put together.

This, he said is equivalent to five one-way trips from Ladakh to Kanyakumari, the one way distance from Ladakh to Kanyakumari being 3810 km if one travels on NH-44. The company was successful in constructing two lanes of 12.77 km each on one side of the four-lane highway stretch along the 110-km Solapur-Bijapur section of NH-13.

The Indian government adopted the lane-kilometre concept to measure highways in April 2018 instead of the traditional linear method used earlier. Under this concept, the length of each lane built is measured instead of counting the overall length of the highway.