BJP staking claim to Purvanchal Expressway project started by SP, says Akhilesh

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav will ride the entire length of the Purvanchal Expressway in a “rath” on Wednesday to symbolically reiterate his claim that the ₹22,500 crore project was started when he was chief minister in 2016.

On Tuesday, SP workers showered flowers on the expressway in various districts and rode cycles on the six-lane road, hours before Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the 341-km highway connecting Lucknow to Ghazipur.

“The ribbon came from Lucknow and the scissors came from New Delhi. There is a tussle to take credit for the work of SP,” tweeted Yadav in Hindi.

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Since the morning, SP workers in red caps rode bicycles and did “floral inauguration” of the six-lane highway.

They climbed onto the expressway from the fields on either side with cycles on their shoulders, and then showered flowers on the road.

SP state spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary said Yadav will begin the fourth leg of the Vijay Yatra on Wednesday morning from Ghazipur and end it in Lucknow the same evening.

Yadav said the ‘Samajwadi’ Expressway’s name was changed as part of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s habit of renaming SP’s projects and re-inaugurating them.

Yadav on Tuesday tweeted pictures and claimed that he laid the foundation of the project in December 2016. “How will BJP be able to wipe out from the pages of history that the foundation for the expressway was laid on December 16”, he said later in a statement.

Yadav also said that fighter jets had landed on the Agra-Lucknow Expressway when the SP ruled the state from 2012 to 2017 and thatthe BJP government had copied the feat for the Purvanchal Expressway inauguration.

After PM Modi’s address and the inauguration event in Sultanpur, Yadav released a statement. “Even as the (UP) assembly elections are getting closer, the BJP is frightened over rising public anger against it. That’s why the chief minister who sat idle for 4.5 years is on foundation-laying and inauguration spree and spinning false stories of development.”

Uttar Pradesh Cabinet Minister Sidharth Nath Singh told ANI: “I suggest that instead of crying like a child now, he should have had focused on the development of the state.”