The Uttar Pradesh government has announced a 1,000 km long, eight-lane highway project on the banks of river Ganga to bring eastern part of the state closer to Delhi.
Under the proposed project, flood control embankments running along the left bank of Ganga will be widened or built where they don’t exist. And on these embankments, a controlled access expressway, with emergency medical services, cyber cafes and food plazas, running through eastern UP to Noida will come up.
Addressing the media, Mayawati called it a “first of its kind project”, comparable only to Sher Shah Suri’s Grand Trunk Road. She said that the benefits will include removal of regional imbalances, easy connectivity enticing BPOs and IT industries, quicker access to markets for farmers, reenergizing of traditional industries like carpet weaving (Bhadohi) and the revival of ancient cities like Bithoor.
The Rs 40,000 crore-project is to be executed by private participation with the builders (chosen through a bidding process) getting land by the expressway to set up industries and institutions. Incidentally, the Gangetic basin’s most fertile tracts lie on the left bank.
While the government hopes the project will kick-start in January 2008, it is uncertain which private player will brave entering a state where Reliance’s retail stores were shut down the day they opened.
Greens unhappy
Raman Tyagi, member of the Janhit Foundation, Meerut, an organisation that works to protect river systems, said: “The project is a recipe for disaster. A river’s natural bed is vast and even a road five kilometres away, might interfere with its natural course. If the river is forced to flow on one side, it will lead to floods. The roads are no solution for floods. The industries will increase the pollution load of an already very dirty river.”
But this is not Mayawati’s first mega project that has raised the hackle of environmentalists. The 175 crore-Taj Heritage Corridor project floated in 2002 and Rs 2,250 crore-Taj Expressway Project (2003) both faced criticism.
Cabinet Secretary Shashank Shekhar Singh, however, proclaimed that clearances for the project had come in late August.
