August 3, 2020: The Uttar Pradesh government will raise Rs 2,900 crore from the Housing and Urban Development Corporation Limited (HUDCO) for the proposed 628-km Ganga Expressway project, which is estimated to cost Rs 36,000 crore.
It will link Meerut with Prayagraj district.
The loan amount would be utilised towards land acquisition for the mega infrastructure project by nodal agency UP Expressways Industrial Development Authority (UPEIDA).
This decision was taken in the 58th board meeting of UPEIDA that was presided over by its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Additional Chief Secretary Awanish Kumar Awasthi here on Saturday.
Ganga Expressway will entail acquisition of 6,556 hectares of land and traverse Meerut, Amroha, Bulandshahar, Budaun, Shahjahanpur, Farrukhabad, Hardoi, Kannauj, Unnao, Rae Bareli, Pratapgarh and Prayagraj districts.
It is among the most ambitious projects of the Yogi Adityanath government apart from under-construction Purvanchal Expressway, Gorakhpur Link Expressway and Bundelkhand Expressway.
Meanwhile, the UPEIDA Board also cleared the proposal for raising loans amounting to Rs 5,900 crore for Bundelkhand Expressway from a consortium of banks led by public sector lender Bank of Baroda and comprising Union Bank of India, Indian Bank, Bank of Maharashtra and UCO Bank.
Estimated to cost Rs 15,000 crore, the Bundelkhand Expressway will link Chitrakoot, Banda, Mahoba, Hamirpur, Jalaun, Auraiya and Etawah districts. The project will connect backward Bundelkhand region with the National Capital Region (NCR) via Agra-Lucknow and Yamuna expressways. The project would start near Bharatkoop at Jhansi-Allahabad National Highway 35 in Chitrakoot district and terminate near village Kudrail, Etawah on Agra-Lucknow Expressway.
Besides, the UPEIDA will create a separate wing for the purpose of land acquisition, development of infrastructure and overall management of the UP defence industrial manufacturing corridor project . It will also sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Indian Navy for promoting the defence manufacturing sector in the proposed corridor, which will have six nodes in UP comprising Lucknow, Kanpur, Jhansi, Agra, Aligarh and Chitrakoot districts.
Meanwhile, the 91-km Gorakhpur Link Expressway is being developed in two different packages. It will cut through Gorakhpur, Sant Kabir Nagar, Ambedkar Nagar and Azamgarh districts.
The work on the various ongoing expressway projects, including Purvanchal Expressway, Bundelkhand Expressway and Gorakhpur Link Expressway, had come to a standstill in March following the imposition of pan-India COVID-19 lockdown. However, the civil works on these mega infra projects were gradually restarted from April onwards in the non-hotspot zones.
The government is proactively providing jobs to the migrant workers in these big projects considering more than 3.5 million labourers had returned to UP following lockdown.
Source: Daily Pioneer
