With three months left for the 2022 Uttar Pradesh elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on Tuesday inaugurate the 341-km six-lane Purvanchal Expressway that would connect the State capital to the eastern regions of the State.
Since the leading Opposition Samajwadi Party has built a formidable caste alliance against the ruling BJP in the region and claimed credit for the project, the new expressway has come under the political spotlight much like the Agra-Lucknow Expressway built under Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav. Politics over the expressway intensified after the Ghazipur administration denied permission to the SP to hold a roadshow to Azamgarh citing that no traffic would be allowed on the expressway on November 16 due to Mr. Modi’s launch of the highway on the same day.
SP re-schedules rath yatra
In response, Mr. Yadav on Monday at a press conference said his party would shower petals at different places on the highway and mark a ‘symbolic’ launch of the highway the foundation stone of which, he said, was laid during his tenure. The SP also re-scheduled its rath yatra to November 17 and changed the route to Lucknow from Ghazipur.
Mr. Modi will inaugurate the expressway at Karwal Kheri in Sultanpur where he will also witness an air show by the IAF on the 3.2-km long airstrip constructed on the expressway to enable landing and take-off of fighter planes in cases of emergency.
The project was built at a cost of ₹22,497 crores, said the Uttar Pradesh Expressways Industrial Development Authority. It starts from village Chaudsarai in Lucknow and ends at village Hydaria on National Highway 31, 18 km east of UP-Bihar border. It would pass through Lucknow, Barabanki, Amethi, Ayodhya, Sultanpur, Ambedkar Nagar, Azamgarh, Mau and Ghazipur districts.
Mr. Yadav accused the BJP of trying to steal credit for the project. He also said the BJP Government had not only removed the word ‘Samajwadi’ from the original name of the project but also ‘compromised’ on the quality to cut costs and launched an incomplete highway, putting commuters at risk. Riders would have to face back pain, he said. In contrast, “If you are drinking tea in a car on the Agra-Lucknow Expressway, you will not spill it even at the speed of 100 kmph,” Mr. Yadav said.
The UPEIDA in a statement said the SP Government had also opened the Agra-Lucknow Expressway in 2016 when it was incomplete and that the BJP Government had to finish several portions of it after 2017.
Stakes high for BJP
With the farmers protest raging in western U.P., the stakes are high for the BJP in Purvanchal where it hopes to showcase the expressway as a beacon of development.
In November 2016, then SP Government opened the 302-km Agra-Lucknow Expressway with a spectacular show of simulated take-offs and landings —‘touch-and-go’ manoeuvre — by six fighter planes of the IAF. It was touted as the hallmark of Mr. Yadav’s pitch to project his infrastructural works.
However, in the 2017 election, in the 10 districts touched by the expressway, the BJP had won 48 seats while the SP could manage only 10. The BSP and the Congress got one each.
