UP govt promises smooth roads by mid June, to spend Rs 3,000 crore

NEW DELHI: In perhaps the biggest such exercise in UP, 60,000 km of existing roads will be made “motorable and pothole-free” at a cost of Rs 3,000 crore by mid-June this year before the onset of monsoon.

The Yogi Adityanath government had already released Rs 942 crore for this exercise last week, UP additional chief secretary, PWD, Sadakant, told ET. “The idea is that any person who enters UP after June should feel that he has a motorable road to drive smoothly — it is a massive exercise,” he said.

The PWD department handles nearly 2.1 lakh km of roads in UP. Since Adityanath fixed a deadline of June 15 to ensure that no roads in the state should have potholes, the department under deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya has worked tirelessly to identify nearly 60,000 km of roads that failed the test.


“A budget of Rs 3,000 crore is envisaged as 60,000 km of district and village roads need urgent repair. We have decided that all this renovation will happen under the surveillance of cameras and a public representative will monitor the work. Quality will be assured along with transparency,” Sadakant said.

In his election speeches in UP, PM Modi had taken on the erstwhile SP government for building the Agra-Lucknow expressway, but leaving the state’s other roads in pitiable condition, making commuters spend long hours traversing them.

“It is true that general maintenance was only taking place on select roads. The district roads and rural roads were not being maintained and are full of potholes. There have also been complaints against PWD for improper work. Now a full action plan has been made to correct this,” Sadakant said.

“While by June 15 roads will be motorable, we will change and beautify all roads within a year. It will be a kayakalp (transformation),” Sadakant said.