Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said the Purvanchal Expressway in Uttar Pradesh’s Sultanpur district is the symbol of the state’s development and will strengthen its economy as he inaugurated the 341km road.
He said that development under previous CMs was limited to places where they had homes and families, but the present regime is giving fruits of developments to the eastern region as good as to the western part of Uttar Pradesh. The previous governments reduced the vital eastern part of the state to “mafiawaad” and poverty, but the BJP government is now writing a new chapter of development, he said.
He said the six-lane expressway will serve as the lifeline of the eastern region and give a big push to economic development of the region and the state. The state goes to assembly polls early next year. The 341-km expressway links state capital Lucknow with Ghazipur and has been constructed at an estimated cost of Rs 22,500 crore. PM Modi landed on the Purvanchal Expressway airstrip in a military transport aircraft. The 3.2-km airstrip has been constructed on the expressway to facilitate emergency landing of fighter aircraft.The Purvanchal Expressway, which has been constructed at a cost of about ₹22,500 crore, starts from Chandsarai village, located near the existing Lucknow-Sultanpur Road (NH-731), in Lucknow district. It ends at Haidaria village on National Highway 31 in Ghazipur, 18 km from the UP-Bihar border, in Ghazipur district.
The Purvanchal Expressway connects the state capital Lucknow to the eastern region via Azamgarh. With the development of this expressway, the eastern region of the state would not only be connected to Lucknow but also further to the National Capital through Agra-Lucknow and Yamuna Expressways.The districts falling on this greenfield expressway are Lucknow, Barabanki, Amethi, Sultanpur, Ayodhya, Ambedkar Nagar, Azamgarh, Mau and Ghazipur.The Expressway will have 22 flyovers, 7 railway-over-bridges (ROB), 7 major bridges, 114 minor bridges, 6 toll plazas, 45 vehicular-underpasses (VUP), 139 Light VUP, 87 pedestrian underpass and 525 box culverts.
