The Lucknow-Agra Greenfield six-lane expressway, the longest in the country at 302 km, was inaugurated on Monday.
Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav opened the highway near Unnao, 50 km from here, in the presence of his son and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav. Mr. Akhilesh Yadav said last month that the timely opening of the expressway would be a birthday gift for his father, who turns 78 on Tuesday.
The expressway, along with the Lucknow Metro, is a major component in Mr. Akhilesh Yadav’s pitch to project his plans for the State. The highway is also a key segment of the Samajwadi Party’s 2017 election campaign as it featured on the first day of the SP's Vikas rath yatra to Unnao.
The ceremony was marked by a spectacular show by six Air Force jets, which landed on a stretch of the expressway. The 302-km long expressway, upgradable to eight-lanes, consists of a 3-km stretch designed to facilitate emergency take-offs and landings of fighter planes. Three Mirage 2000s and three Sukhoi SU30 MKI enthralled the audience on the occasion with their low pass and touch down manoeuvers.
U.P. capital gets closer to New Delhi
The expressway, built in just 23 months, will not only reduce the time taken to travel the distance between Lucknow and Agra to three-and-a-half hours, but also bring the U.P. capital closer to New Delhi, cutting the time travelled between the two cities to 5-6 hours. It would join the Yamuna Expressway at Agra to connect Lucknow to Delhi.
The highway cuts through Lucknow, Unnao, Kanpur and Hardoi districts before passing through the Yadav clan strongholds of Kannauj, Auraiya, Mainpuri, Etawah and Firozabad to connect the State capital with the city of the Taj Mahal. “Nowhere in the world has such a good quality and long expressway been built in such a short time,” Mr. Akhilesh Yadav has said of the Expressway.
He described it as a “path to pave the way for development and prosperity of all.” “Other than social and economic development, it would boost farming, tourism and industry,” he said. ''Trade is expected to get a fillip and farmers will be provided better and bigger markets for their crop in the mandis that come up along the road''.
The highway is equipped with advanced traffic management to cope with fog and reduce accidents.
The senior-most bureaucrat in charge of the expressway, Navneet Sehgal, was grievously injured, along with four others, when his car met with a head-on collision on the highway on Friday.
‘An example for the rest of the country’
The State government acquired 3,500 hectare across 236 villages from 30,000 farmers for the project without a single court case or protest. The land was acquired through “mutual agreement” as the government increased the compensation amount to four times the circle rate through direct negotiation with farmers. Officials were tasked with completing the project before the campaign for the 2017 elections peaked.
“The land acquisition for the project should serve as an example for the rest of the country,” said Mr. Akhilesh Yadav.
The expressway has 911 small and big structures along its route, including eight-lane bridges across the Ganga and the Yamuna. It is the first time such constructions have been made over rivers in the country. Constructed under the aegis of the Uttar Pradesh Expressways Industrial Development Authority (UPEIDA), the expressway also consists of numerous underpasses and minor and major bridges. A force of 2, 500 labourers, 1000 engineers and 3000 machines were deployed for the project.
Mayawati hits out at CM
BSP chief Mayawati accused the SP government of inaugurating the expressway even before it was complete and raised fears it could become a cause for accidents. She made a reference to Mr. Sehgal’s accident to take a dig at Mr. Yadav. The inauguration was done in a hurried fashion as Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav is anxious the date for the elections could be announced any day, Ms. Mayawati said.
She accused the SP government of “regionalism and partisan behaviour” with the project as the expressway passes most of the districts in the stronghold of the Yadav family. The entire State should see benefits of development not just district associated with the party, she said.
She termed Mr. Akhilesh Yadav’s development projects “hollow and only on paper”, and claimed the “blueprint of most of these projects was prepared” under her regime. “The expressway project started under the BSP government. A government notification gazette related to it was issued on April 20, 2008 by the BSP government, which gave its approval to the project for the development of 14 districts. However, the SP government changed the project’s form and name, made it a medium for their travel to Kannauj and Saifai.”
