If the Mayawati government in her earlier term as Chief Minister came up with the ambitious 150 km-long Taj Corridor expressway from Greater Noida to Agra, this time she has made the big leap with plans for an eight lane access-controlled 850-km expressway connecting the Delhi suburb to Varanasi and linking the western and eastern boundaries of UP with a high-speed corridor.

“The environmental clearance from the Environment Ministry is almost through and will be given to us in two days. The project is sure to bring down travel time from Delhi to Varanasi from over 19 hours to less than 10 hours when ready,” said a highly placed official in the UP government.

The Rs 25,000-crore corridor will cover some 850 km, starting from Greater Noida, intersecting on its way high-density cities Bulandshahar, Badaun, Shahjahanpur, Unnao, Pratapgarh, Allahabad and Varanasi before ending at Ghazipur. Link roads will connect the expressway with Farrukhabad, Lucknow and Mirzapur.

The expressway, will be built “as far as possible” upon bunds (embankments) along the left bank of the Ganga to “minimize, check the problem of floods”.

“We have started the tendering process with calls for consultancy services and creation of a SPV (special purpose vehicle),” a senior official said.

The UP PWD and Irrigation department will develop the final alignment plan and the Infrastructure Development department will call for detailed feasibility studies, environmental, cost and technical assessments of constructing an expressway along the river.

To be executed on Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) basis, this will be one of the first big-ticket projects UP will be opting for on this model.

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