With an eye on making the much-hyped Agra-lucknow Expressway a feather in Samajwadi Party’s cap in 2017 Assembly elections, the patriarch of the party Mulayam Singh Yadav laid the foundation stone of the expressway and elicited promise from the developers that they would complete the work in 22 months.
“I do not lay the foundation stones. I prefer to inaugurate the schemes. And wherever I lay foundation stone, I fix the inauguration date. The Chief Minister, the PWD Minister and the officials sitting here should tell me when this project will be completed,” Mulayam Singh repeatedly asked the officers and Ministers during the function of the Agra-lucknow Expressway here on Sunday. Deputy GM AFCON, S Paramsivam, one of the developers came forward and said that they would complete the project in two years.
“Make it 22 months. Though I know that this scheme will be completed earlier than that,” Yadav said. The Samajwadi Party plans to showcase its development agenda before 2017 Assembly elections and therefore it is pushing ahead with Agra-lucknow Expressway project. It also wants that one leg of Metro in lucknow should start operating by October, 2016.
Mulayam forced developers and Government officials to admit that the project would be ready by September 2016. As Yadav laid the foundation by pressing a button, work for all the five packages of the Agra-lucknow Greenfield Expressway started.
Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav said, “Around 232 villages would be connected through this expressway. Four mandis of milk, potato, grain and fruits would also be set on the expressway.“Till next election this expressway should be ready,” he added.
The 302 km long six lane Agra- lucknow greenfield expressway will be constructed in five packages. That include: Agra-Firozabad package, Firozabad-Etawah package. Etawah-Kannauj package, Kannauj-Unnao package and Unnao-lucknow expressway.
This project will be developed by the state government through its own funding on EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction) model with a cost of around Rs 15,000 crores. The expressway will pass through 10 districts of Agra, Firozabad, Mainpuri, Etawah, Aurriya, Kannauj, Kanpur city, Unnao, Hardoi and lucknow.
The six lane assessed expressway, which can be expanded to eight lane in future, will have pedestrian way, service road, green belt and underpass for animal. The width of the expressway would be 110 meter. The expressway will have two toll plaza while on every 100 kilometers there would be public facilities.The contract of the project has already been give. Four companies will separately start onstruct of roads and While PNC Infratech has been selected for package one (Agra-Firozabad), Afcons Infrastructure ifor package two (Firozabad-Etawah). , Nagarjuna Construction Company will construct package three (Etawah-Kannauj), Afcons Infrastructure will take care of Kannauj-Unnao expressway. &T, which forms part of package five, will construct the Unnao-lucknow expressway.