6-Lane Highway To Ballia To Be The Longest

[kissan]

LUCKNOW: The Janata Parivar may still be a distant reality but UP government is already planning to provide Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav an expressway route to meet his 'samdhi' Lalu Prasad Yadav and grand-daughter in law Raj Laxmi.

Come July and UP government will be ready with a road map for a new green field expressway between Lucknow and Ballia, which is barely two hours away from Patna.

According to a draft of the state government, the proposed 382 km six-lane expressway, the longest in the country (until now Lucknow-Agra expressway is the longest), will pass through Azamgarh, Mulayam's parliamentary constituency, to reach Ballia, on the UP-Bihar border. "Patna is only two hours away from Ballia if Bihar government constructs a similar expressway in its territory,'' said an official.

Sources said he expressway may bypass Sultanpur which lies between Lucknow and Azamgarh. It may, however, touch Kagazipur which is between Azamgarh and Ballia.

The new expressway comes in addition to the already proposed 302Km Lucknow-Agra expressway and the existing 165Km Yamuna Expressway between Agra and Greater Noida. Together the three expressways would lessen the travel time between Noida and Ballia by nearly six hours. At present, it takes around 16 to 18 hours to travel from Noida to Ballia by road.

When contacted, chief executive officer of UP Expressway Industrial Development Authority (UPEIDA), Navneet Sehgal said the state government had asked a consultant to study the feasibility of the project and provide a final draft along with the alignment of the expressway by July. "After that we would be going ahead with the land acquisition," he said. According to an estimate the state government would spend around Rs 12,000 crore on the project.

Sehgal said the expressway is aimed to develop eastern UP which is otherwise deprived of an expressway- like facility. "The coming up of expressway would catalyze development in the region similar to the lines of west UP,'' he said. Notably, the state government has planned smart cities and industrial set up along the Lucknow-Agra corridor. Sources said that it is only after the final blue print of the project is ready that any such plan would be put forth.

In effect, the Lucknow-Ballia project replaces the earlier 1,045Km Ganga expressway between Noida and Ballia, proposed during previous Mayawati government. A senior official in the UP government said the Ganga expressway passed along the river Ganga. "The new expressway would cover a much shorter distance," he said.

Connecting places

* The six-lane expressway would be around 382 km long

* It will go to Ballia via Azamgarh

* Is in addition to existing Yamuna and proposed Lucknow-Agra expressway

* Replaces Ganga express way proposed during Mayawati government