Big boost for Uttar Pradesh's development: PM Modi

Sultanpur (UP): Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday launched the 340-km Purvanchal Expressway in Uttar Pradesh, built at a cost of Rs 22,500 crore, shortly after he landed in an Air Force C-130J Super Hercules aircraft on the highway.

While inaugurating the Expressway at Karwal Kheri, the Prime Minister said that "this is the expressway to the State's development and will show the way to a new Uttar Pradesh."

UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Governor Anandiben Patel received the Prime Minister as he arrived in Sultanpur in a C-130 Hercules plane.

The launch comes almost 3 years after the Prime Minister laid its foundation stone in Azamgarh in July 2018. The infrastructure project, which is one of the biggest completed by the Yogi Adityanath government, has been billed as the "carrier of development" to the underdeveloped Purvanchal region.

As UP Assembly elections draw closer, there has been a tug of war over the project. On Monday, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav accused the BJP of trying to claim credit for the SP government's work before the Assembly polls and alleged that the Yogi Adityanath administration compromised on the quality of the expressway. Earlier, Modi sounded the poll bugle for the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, saying the previous governments did "injustice" to the people by "working for only one family", while the BJP "ushered in an era of unforeseen development".

He also said that there were areas in Uttar Pradesh previously "a hub of mafia and poverty" but the expressway is a testimony to the development the State has witnessed in the recent past. "The poor should get pucca houses, the poor should have toilets, women should not have to go out to defecate in the open, everyone should have electricity in their homes, there were many such works which needed to be done here.

But I am deeply pained that the then government in UP did not support me," he added. Rejecting Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav's allegation of poor quality of work of the Expressway, the Uttar Pradesh unit of the BJP on Tuesday said he is troubled by the fact that the 341-km road is ready without corruption of even Re 1.