UP road project attracts major infra companies

New Delhi: Major infrastructure players such as L&T, Gammon, DLF and Shapoorji Pallonji have shown preliminary interest in the 950 km Ganga Expressway planned by the Uttar Pradesh Government.

Considered as one of the largest ever road project floated by a state government, the Rs 25,000 crore road would stretch across UP from Greater Noida in the west to Ballia in the east.

The state government has already issued the request for qualification (RFQ) for global tenders. The RFQ document has to be submitted within a week. The consultants for the project are SREI Infrastructure Finance and RITES.

The state government will take care of the administrative part of the project. It plans to start construction of the expressway from April 2008. The consultants have not decided upon the completion time.

Starting from freight container depot at Sikandarabad in Gautam Buddha Nagar, the access-controlled expressway will move along the left bank of river Ganga.

The eight lane stretch would pass through Bulandshahr, Badaun, Shahjahanpur, Hardoi, Unnao, Rae Bareli, Pratapgarh, Allahabad and Varanasi districts.

According to consultants, though irrigation land, farm land and stretches of urban land would be used for creating the expressway, a major part of the road would pass through wasteland so as to expedite the land acquisition process.

With the movement of freight and passenger transport set to increase two fold in the next five years, a new road network was needed, according to sources.

The UP irrigation department would construct an eight- foot-high and 40-meter-wide bund along the left bank of the river from Narora to Varanasi.

An amount of Rs 8,000 crore would be spent on constructing a 600 km long embankment along the expressway, which would protect the low lying areas from floods.

Since it is going to be an expressway, a service road would also be constructed for facilitating the movement of local traffic.

The project would help in reclamation of around three lakh hectares of land, which would be used for agriculture and urban projects. The proposed expressway will also include commercial hubs along almost 1000 km stretch.