Purvanchal E’way: Work likely to begin in June

LUCKNOW: The Yogi Adityanath government’s most ambitious infrastructure project, the Purvanchal Expressway, is likely to get rolling from the first week of June.

The 340- km expressway will start from the state capital and end in Ghazipur.

The UP Expressways Industrial Development Authority (UPEIDA) has already cleared technical bids of 12 prominent companies. Now, it is all set to finalise the financial bid.

According to UPEIDA officials, financial bids will be open on March 28. The company quoting lowest financial bid will be allotted the tender by the last week of April or first week of May.

“The state government has expedited the process of finalizing financial bid of the Purvanchal Expressway. Once it is finalised the construction work will start by end of May or in the first week of June,” said a senior official of the UPEIDA.

The expressway would traverse through nine districts of the state, including Lucknow, Barabanki, Faizabad, Ambedkar Nagar, Amethi, Sultanpur, Azamgarh, Mau and Ghazipur.

Apart from this, the expressway would also connect important cities like Varanasi, Ayodhya, Gorakhpur and Allahabad through link roads.

In addition to this, the expressway will also have a three-km long runway at Kudebhar in Sultanpur district. This runway has been proposed for landing and take-off of fighter jets of Indian Air Force during an emergency situation.

For this mega project, the 4,332 hectares of the land is required. The project will cost around Rs 19,000 crore to the state government and out of this around Rs 6,500 crore will be spent on acquiring land for the mega-project.

According to senior officials of the state government, the Yogi government is in no mood to delay the execution of the project.

“After the BJP lost all important Gorakhpur and Phulpur Parliamentary seats in recently concluded bypolls, chief minister Yogi Adityanath wants all projects of the state government to be expedited,” said a senior official of the state government.

A consortium led by the State Bank of India would give a credit line of Rs 15,000 crore for the project. The project will be a big boost for Purvanchal that is considered to be the most backward region of Uttar Pradesh.