Yogi Adityanath government unhappy over delay in Akhilesh Yadav's pet e-way project

NEW DELHI: The Yogi Adityanath government has expressed its unhappiness over the delay in the land acquisition for the country's biggest expressway project from Lucknow to the eastern end of UP in Ballia, a dream project of the former state chief minister Akhilesh Yadav. A target of two months has been fixed to complete the land acquisition.

The 348-km expressway is to be known as the Purvanchal Expressway. The new Chief Executive Officer of UP Expressway Industrial Development Authority ( UPEDA), Avneesh Awasthi reviewed the project and found that only 38% of land has been acquired till date for the project and slow progress in the same has been reported from districts like Azamgarh, Ghazipur and Lucknow.

4724 hectares of land in 9 districts has to be acquired for the project but only 1827 hectares of land has been acquired and made available for the e-way construction so far, the review has shown. The Yogi government is pushing ahead with this project which was started by Akhilesh Yadav as the Chief Minister.

This 8-lane expressway from Lucknow to Ballia will join the existing expressway from Agra to Lucknow, which was built under the Akhilesh Yadav regime in just 23 months, to provide a seamless drive from one end of UP to the other. The Yamuna Expressway is already operational from Greater Noida till Agra.

Awasthi said a team of nine officials were sent to assess the progress of the e-way project and now daily targets had been fixed to complete the land acquisition in a transparent manner within two months. Awasthi said he will do another review of the project after 15 days.

Adequate funds have been made available to District Collectors to acquire the land from farmers. Maximum land for the project at 1436 hectares is to be acquired in Sultanpur district while 1261 acres is to be acquired in Azamgarh district, which is the the Lok Sabha constituency of Mulayam Singh Yadav. The land acquisition progress in Azamgarh however stands at only 27% presently.