Indian Prime Minister is about to lay foundation stone in Azamgarh for an expressway between Lucknow and Ghazipur.
What is the plan of UP’s express highway?
Running 354 km, Express highway will complete a link by expressways between UP’s east and west.
Expressways from Noida in the west to Agra (165 km), and then from Agra to Lucknow (302 km), are already in place, before this extends to Ghazipur in the east, a total of over 800 km.
There is a proposal to link the expressway to Varanasi which will run through Azamgarh.
Being built at Rs 23,000 crore, it is expected to cut travel time between Lucknow and Ghazipur down to 4½ hours, from the current 6 hours.
What is the status of the expressway?
Earlier in 2016 the then UP government has laid the foundation stone ahead of the Assembly elections, but the government had not acquired even half the land.
After the present state government took charge, it cancelled the earlier tender citing lack of land as the reason.
Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, the government has revived the project, making a few changes in the alignment, and replacing the name “Samajwadi Purvanchal Expressway” with simply “Purvanchal Expressway”.
When the first tender was floated in November 2015, the proposal was to connect Lucknow to Ballia on the Bihar border.
After a review, the plan was limited until Ghazipur in order to reduce the extent of clearances that would have been required.
The initial six packages (stretches) were increased to eight packages.
The new government changed the name and cancelled the tenders allotted on the ground that less that 40% land had been acquired.
The government, however, cancelled the process again, hoping to lower the construction cost further.
Ahead of the Azamgarh event, government sources said they expect to complete the tender process soon.
