Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Monday charged the BJP Government with compromising on the quality of Purvanchal Expressway to cut down the project cost and inaugurate it before the Assembly polls to claim credit.Regretting the denial of permission by the Ghazipur administration to use the expressway on the pretext of its inauguration, the SP chief said his party will offer flowers in a symbolic gesture to mark the inauguration on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to inaugurate the 340-km-long expressway connecting Ghazipur with Lucknow in Sultanpur on Tuesday. "In a bid to make it cheap, there has been a compromise on its quality. To take credit ahead of the polls, the BJP is going to inaugurate the half-baked (‘aadha-adhura') Purvanchal Expressway. There has been a compromise with the quality with which it should have been built," the SP chief told reporters.
He said the foundation of the expressway was laid during his party's tenure. Pointing to the quality of work on the Agra-Lucknow expressway, he said in recent rains, some portion of it caved in. "If you had travelled on the Agra-Lucknow expressway, you would have experienced that tea will not spill even if you drive at 100 km per hour," he said. "But, we don't know which bitumen has been mixed that if you increase the speed, then you will have stomachache and even pain in your waist," Yadav said.
He also claimed that the government snatched the expressway work from companies which could have made a better road. "We feel happy that the prime minister has not inaugurated any quality road like the one made during the rule of the Samajwadis," he said, adding that they are not taking side of the companies from which the work was snatched.Those companies are doing the best job in the country. If they had made the expressway, it would have been better than the Agra-Lucknow expressway," Yadav said.
"But, we don't know which quality has been brought by our Baba CM,” he said taking a dig at Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath."Dividers and medians have been reduced to make it cheap," the former UP chief minister alleged.
However, Akhilesh Yadav did not mention names of the companies. Yadav also said if the SP is voted to power, it will construct a market along the expressway and provide all facilities. Yadav further said, "The Samajwadi Party will on November 16 offer flowers in a symbolic gesture to inaugurate it. Very soon the SP will make a programme to move on the expressway."