Purvanchal E-way to open for public from Jan 26

New Delhi: Uttar Pradesh is readying to throw open the Purvanchal Expressway to public from January 26 next year ahead of the deadline, as it is going ahead full-steam on its big road projects amid the Covid-19 pandemic, said the state additional chief secretary (home) Awanish K Awasthi.The 340-km long expressway, whose foundation stone was laid by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2018, will connect Lucknow to Ghazipur, Awasthi told ET. The deadline for its completion is April 2021, 30 months after work began. Another major project, the Bundelkhand Expressway, whose foundation stone was also laid by the PM, will be made operational by the end of 2021, said Awasthi. This expressway is important as it will service the upcoming defence corridor in UP and help investors get a fast road link to Delhi, he said.UP plans to invite international bids for a private-public partnership (PPP) to construct one of the country’s longest expressways, the 628-km long Ganga Expressway from Meerut to Prayagraj, at a cost of Rs 33,000 crore, a project that Awasthi described as “one of the biggest challenges” for the state government given its scale. “In Phase-2 of this project, chief minister Yogi Adityanath wants us to take the Ganga Expressway up to Haridwar and Varanasi which will make its length over 1,000 km,” he said.This network of expressways will “open the entire UP to Delhi and benefit Bihar as well”, said Awasthi. “We have seen that people prefer to move by road from Delhi to Lucknow through the Agra-Lucknow expressway than by air. There is a jump in traffic on the Lucknow Expressway after the ‘unlock’ happened, as people now prefer their own transport,” he said. Awasthi, a key officer in the fight against the pandemic, said UP will have conducted 10 million Covid-19 tests by the end of September.

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