Mumbai: The Uttar Pradesh (UP) government is expeditiously undertaking the Poorvanchal Expressway construction work to bring development in eastern part of the state. The main carriage of the expressway will be open for traffic from March 31st onwards informed Awanish Kumar Awasthi, additional chief Secretary (home) in a media briefing.
"Poorvanchal expressway will become the backbone of eastern UP which currently does not have proper connectivity and districts like Azamgarh, Mau, Gazipur will be connected to the main city Lucknow," he said.
The 340 km long expressway starts from Chandsaray village located at Lucknow at (NH-731). It will be routed through Barabanki, Amethi, Ayodhya, Sultanpur, Ambedkar Nagar, Azamgarh and Mau to terminate at Ghazipur's Haidaria village.
The six lane expressway, which can be broadened upto eight lanes in future, will have 18 flyovers, seven rail overbridge, seven large bridges, 114 small bridges, 13 interchanges (including six toll plazas), five ramp plaza, 271 underpasses and 518 bridges.
An airstrip of 3.2km at Sultanpur on Poorvanchal Expressway is also built. According to officials, during emergency situations like war /natural calamity the Indian Airforce fighter planes like Sukhoi, Rafale can carry out landing and take off operations from here. Regular inspection by Air Force commander is held related to construction of this air strip which is done as per the defense norms.
Furthermore the Poorvanchal expressway the work is being implemented under Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) Mode. It has been divided into eight sections. The total project cost is Rs 22,494.66 crore, of which the cost of civil work is Rs 11,216 crore.
"Covid-19 outbreak induced lockdown in March did not slow down the project work rather, major works completed. Only a few bridges and flyovers work is pending now," asserted Awasthi.
