Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the Ganga Expressway on Wednesday in Hardoi, but its reverberations will also be heard in far-off West Bengal. The 594-km-long greenfield Ganga Expressway will pass
through 12 districts in Uttar Pradesh. It will link Meerut in western UP to Prayag in central UP and form a crucial link of connectivity in the state. The districts in between which get linked by the expressway are Hapur, Bulandshahar, Amroha, Sambhal, Badayun, Shahjahanpur, Hardoi, Unnao, Rae Bareli and Pratapgarh. The six-lane access-controlled greenfield expressway will cut down the travel time from Meerut to Prayag from the current 10-12 hours to 6-7 hours and is designed for a speed of 120 km/h. The Rs 36,200-crore expressway also boasts of a 3.5-km-long airstrip near Shahjahanpur for emergency use by the Indian Air Force. The IAF has already conducted trial landings at the airstrip. The construction of the airstrip is one of the big highlights of the project as it is made of reinforced concrete of superior strength to be able to bear the load of heavy aircraft. PM Modi will inaugurate the expressway in Hardoi and also address a public gathering around 11:30 am. While his speech will largely focus on the growth story in UP, it will also be closely followed for any reference to poll-bound West Bengal. The second and final round of voting in West Bengal will take place from Wednesday morning. Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Modi will arrive at Hardoi from his constituency in Varanasi after darshan at the revered Kashi Vishwanath Mandir. Hectic arrangements have been made for the inauguration function at Hardoi. Apart from Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, the newly installed state BJP President, Pankaj Chowdhry, and senior officials visited the location over the last week to oversee the preparations for the inauguration and PM’s address. The expressway is billed as a growth engine for the state and will boost tourism, industrial, and agriculture growth in UP. Senior officials say that industrial corridors would be developed in land parcels along the expressway for entrepreneurs to set up their units. The transport of agricultural produce along the expressway would get a boost, and farmers in central and western UP would be able to take their produce easily to the vast markets in Delhi as the starting point of the expressway in Meerut is already well connected to Delhi.
