Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on November 16 inaugurate the 341-km long Purvanchal Expressway at Karwal Kheri in Sultanpur district of Uttar Pradesh.
The six-lane expressway, which can be expanded to eight-lane in the future, starts from Chandsarai village on the outskirts of Lucknow and ends at Haidaria village on National Highway 31 in Ghazipur district, 18 kms ahead of the UP-Bihar border.
The PM took to Twitter, a day before the inauguration, and called it a ‘special day’ in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) –ruled the state’s growth trajectory. The PM had laid the foundation stone of the project on July 14, 2018.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Uttar Pradesh on November, 16 and inaugurate Purvanchal Expressway at Karwal Kheri in Sultanpur district at around 1:30 PM,” a release from Prime Minister’s Office said.
The PM is expected to land on the Expressway in a C-130J Super Hercules transport aircraft, according to reports. The project, one of the biggest completed by the Yogi Adityanath government at the estimated cost of Rs 22,496 crore, has been billed as the “carrier of development” to the underdeveloped Purvanchal region of Uttar Pradesh.
The Indian Air Force will perform an airshow at the event to be held along a 3.2-km stretch at Karwal Kheri specially designed to enable landing/take-off of Indian Air Force fighter planes in case of emergency, the release said.
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Once open for the public, the expressway will serve as a direct link between the National Capital Region and eastern Uttar Pradesh close to Bihar. The Yamuna Expressway connects Noida to Agra, the Lucknow-Agra Expressway goes up to UP capital and now the Purvanchal expressway connects Lucknow with the UP-Bihar border.
There are 18 flyovers, seven railway over bridges, seven long bridges, 104 minor bridges, 13 interchanges, and 271 underpasses along the highway that passes through Lucknow, Barabanki, Amethi, Ayodhya, Sultanpur, Ambedkar Nagar, Azamgarh, Mau, and Ghazipur districts of the state.
Akhilesh Yadav claims credit
The project has sparked a war of words between the state’s ruling BJP and the opposition Samajwadi Party (SP), with both parties claiming credit for conceiving the project.
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SP chief and former Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav accused the BJP of trying to claim credit for the SP government’s work before the assembly polls. He said that the land acquisition for the project started during his government between 2012 and 2017.
“This government has a habit of calling someone else’s work as its own. They first changed the name of the Samajwadi expressway to Purvanchal expressway, and then called the expressway theirs. They also compromised on its quality, so much so that during recent rains, the expressway caved in at several places,” Yadav said.
Yadav claimed that he had laid the foundation stone for the Purvanchal Expressway on December 23, 2016. Yadav also alleged that the Yogi Adityanath government compromised on the quality of the expressway. Earlier, BSP supremo Mayawati had claimed that the expressway, and other projects, were envisaged during her regime.
The UP government said in response fresh alignment was finalised before its foundation stone was laid in 2018. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said the SP was incapable of inaugurating any project.
“The public has not left them capable of any inauguration because they did not have any vision for development and because of their negative mindset. Those who created hurdles before development are today making attempts to associate their name with every work,” said the chief minister.
In a swipe at Yadav, UP BJP said he might as well claim credit for Ram Mandir in Ayodhya.
“The manner in which Akhilesh Yadav is beating the drum of kagazi [on paper only] expressway, his next tweet will be that ‘Ram temple has also been built by the Samajwadi Party government.’ Take this credit also Akhilesh ji…when you tell so many lies then one more lie can do,” the UP BJP said in a tweet in Hindi.
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Yadav has asked his party workers to ‘symbolically’ inaugurate the expressway after he was denied permission to carry out a rally close to the venue of PM Modi’s programme. Yadav’s ‘Vijay Yatra’ was also scheduled for November 16.
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