PM Modi Says Purvanchal Expressway "Uniting UP", Slams Earlier Governments

PM Modi said the highway "will unite UP", adding, "When I laid the foundation stone of the highway three years back, I never thought I would land here on an aircraft one day. This highway will benefit the poor, middle class, farmers, and traders."

Slamming the former governments, PM said they "punished" the state. "As an MP from UP, I have developed a relationship with locals. The manner in which they discriminated, the manner in which they did welfare of only their family - people of UP will permanently remove them from the path of the state's development... you did this in 2017," he said ahead of elections next year.

Attacking Akhilesh Yadav, the Prime Minister told the crowd: "In 2014 when you gave me the opportunity to serve this great nation, I started going into the minute details. But I'm pained that the then-UP government didn't cooperate. They were also scared of upsetting their vote banks by standing beside me in public."

In an endorsement for Yogi Adityanath, who had come under criticism over the handling of the Covid second wave, the PM said, "The state has got thousands of kilometers of roads in the last four years... medical colleges have been set up. The state has given over 14 crore vaccine doses so far." 

Akhilesh Yadav has been targeting the ruling BJP over the big launch, claiming that he deserves credit for the work. "The ribbon has come from Lucknow and the scissors came from Delhi to take credit for the Samajwadi Party's work..." he tweeted today. But Yogi Adityanath has said the project's foundation stone was laid in 2018 by the Prime Minister, defying Mr Yadav's claims. 

The Prime Minister today also witnessed a Mirage 2000 landing on a 3.2 km emergency airstrip, and a servicing demo. An AN-32 transport aircraft landed troops on the airstrip. A flypast by three Kiran Mk2s, flanked by 2 Sukhoi 30 jets followed.

Over 2,000 buses were diverted for the big event to fetch crowds, the opposition claimed this morning as locals in some parts said they faced inconvenience. In Varanasi and Faizabad, officials admitted that bus schedules were changed due to the event, and buses were taken to the venue in the Sultanpur district.

The highway is "6-lane wide which can be expanded to 8-lane in future. It has been constructed at an estimated cost of about Rs 22,500 crores," according to an official statement.

It is going to give a boost to the economic development of the eastern part of Uttar Pradesh especially the districts of Lucknow, Barabanki, Amethi, Ayodhya, Sultanpur, Ambedkar Nagar, Azamgarh, Mau, and Ghazipur, the statement says.

The Sultanpur district saw massive preparation for the event. Dry runs were carried out for the landing on the 3.2 km long emergency strip. A clip of a dry-run on Sunday showed a Mirage 2000, an AN-32 turboprop, and a Sukhoi-30 landing on the highway, about 100 km from state capital Lucknow.