UP to raise Rs 2,900 crore from Hudco for 628-km Ganga Expressway

The mega infra project is estimated to cost Rs 36,000 cr; loan to be used for land acquisition

The Uttar Pradesh government will raise Rs 2,900 crore from the Housing and Urban Development Corporation Limited (Hudco) for the proposed 628-km Ganga Expressway project, which is estimated to cost Rs 36,000 crore.

This loan amount would be utilised towards land acquisition for the mega infrastructure project by nodal agency UP Expressway Industrial Development Authority (UPEIDA).

This decision was taken last evening at the 58th board meeting of UPEIDA presided over by its chief executive officer (CEO) and UP additional chief secretary Awanish Kumar Awasthi here. Listed on the NSE and BSE, Hudco is a central government-owned corporation under the administrative control of the union ministry of housing and urban affairs.

Ganga Expressway will entail acquisition of 6,556 hectares of land and traverse Meerut, Amroha, Bulandshahar, Badaun, Shahjahanpur, Farrukhabad, Hardoi, Kannauj, Unnao, Rae Bareli, Pratagarh and Prayagraj districts.

It is among the most ambitious projects of the Yogi Adityanath government apart from under-construction Purvanchal Expressway, Gorakhpur Link Expressway and Bundelkhand Expressway.

Meanwhile, the UPEIDA board also cleared the proposal of raising loans worth Rs 5,900 crore for Bundelkhand Expressway from a consortium of banks led by public sector lender Bank of Baroda and comprising Union Bank of India, Indian Bank, Bank of Maharashtra and Uco Bank.

Estimated to cost Rs 15,000 crore, Bundelkhand Expressway will link Chitrakoot, Banda, Mahoba, Hamirpur, Jalaun, Auraiya and Etawah districts. Last year, the state had awarded the six packages of the Expressway to the selected bidders, including Apco Infratech, Ashoka Buildcon, Gawar Construction and Dilip Buildcon.

The project will connect backward Bundelkhand region with the national capital region (NCR) via Agra-Lucknow and Yamuna expressways. The project would start near Bharatkoop at Jhansi-Allahabad National Highway (NH) 35 in Chitrakoot district and terminate near village Kudrail, Etawah on Agra-Lucknow Expressway.

Besides, UPEIDA will create a separate wing for the purpose of land acquisition, development of infrastructure and overall management of the UP Defence Industrial Corridor programme. It will also sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Indian Navy for promoting the defence manufacturing sector in the proposed Corridor, which will have six nodes in UP comprising Lucknow, Kanpur, Jhansi, Agra, Aligarh and Chitrakoot districts.

Meanwhile, 91 km Gorakhpur Link Expressway is being developed in 2 different packages. It will cut through Gorakhpur, Sant Kabir Nagar, Ambedkar Nagar and Azamgarh districts.

The work on the various ongoing expressway projects, including Purvanchal Expressway, Bundelkhand Expressway and Gorakhpur Link Expressway, had come to a standstill in March following the imposition of pan India covid-19 lockdown.

However, the civil works on these mega infra projects were gradually restarted from April onwards in the non-hotspot zones. The government is proactively providing jobs to the migrant workers in these big projects considering more than 3.5 million labourers had returned to UP following lockdown.