As Prime Minister Narendra Modi embarks on his open-jeep roadshow from the Nizamuddin Bridge on the Delhi-Meerut Expressway and subsequently, flies to Baghpat to inaugurate the Eastern Peripheral Expressway — India’s first smart and green highway — on Sunday, the BJP would be hoping it strikes just the right chords, both developmental and political, the latter assuming significance given the lok Sabha bypolls in Kairana on Monday.
Amid massive security arrangements, the BJP plans to showcase it as a grand twin event. The roadshow will cover 9 km of the about 9 km first leg of the Delhi-Meerut Expressway, which has already been painted saffron with thousands of BJP flags adorning every single house on either side of the stretch.
The Delhi BJP has deployed 10,000 booth-level workers who will form a human chain along the Expressway and cheer for Modi.
BJP general secretary Kuldeep Chahal said, “Representatives and MPs from all seven constituencies will accumulate at different points, along with BJP workers. We have deployed our booth-level workers at different points,” he added.
As for the inauguration of the 135-km EPE, it is being projected as a feather in the cap of the Modi dispensation that is out to project its thrust on development. More so, since lack of infrastructure, particularly good roads in the Kairana region, has been one of the main issues in the poll campaign.
Coming just a day before the bypolls, which could be a touch-and-go affair with a combined Opposition of the RlD, the SP and the BSP taking on the BJP, while the Opposition may question its timing, BJP leaders denied any political angle in it saying it was being done as the Supreme Court too had directed the NHAI to throw it open by May 31.
Besides dedicating the EPE to the nation, Modi would also address a public meeting at Baghpat, a neighbouring constituency of Kairana, which has already been objected to by the Opposition parties.
The 135-km EPE, built at a cost of Rs 11,000 crore, has several unique features and is India’s first highway to be lit by solar power besides provisions of rainwater harvesting on every 500 metres on both sides and would showcase 36 national monuments and 40 fountains, Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari had said on Friday, adding it has been completed in a record 500 days. There are eight solar power plants on this expressway having a capacity of 4000-kilo watt (4 MW).