Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati?s pet project ? the Ganga Expressway, the country?s longest ? is being put into cold storage. The state government last month signed a supplementary agreement with the concessionaire of the project, Jaypee Associates. Under this, the state government stated that since environmental clearance for the project was stuck with the Centre, it has decided to return the R1,000-crore bank guarantee amount to the concessionaire, with a clause that if and when the project gets the environmental clearance the guarantee amount would be deposited by the concessionaire once again.
According to sources, the decision came in the wake of the fact that the delay in getting the environmental clearance was beyond the control of either the state government or the concessionaire and hence the money was being returned.
The fate of the R40,000-crore project ? envisaged as a 1,047-km-long, eight-lane, access-controlled expressway that was to connect Greater Noida at one end of Uttar Pradesh to Ballia at its other end ? has been under a cloud since May 2009, when the Allahabad High Court restrained the state government from proceeding with the project and directed it to obtain prior environmental clearance from the Centre. Later, farmers? unrest and violent protests against land acquisition and compensation issues added further wrinkles.
According to people close to the matter, the latest move has been prompted by the prospect of the forthcoming UP assembly elections. ?Uncertainty about the possibility of the Mayawati government making it back after the polls has probably led to this decision,? said one person, who requested anonymity, adding the project now looks to be truly dead in spirit.
All Opposition parties in UP, including the Samajwadi Party, Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Lok Dal, have been vocal in their opposition to the project. Launching scathing attacks on the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) government for proposing a project of this nature, they have alleged that it has been planned to give undue benefits to the project concessionaire at the cost of the farmers. Farmers? groups and environmentalists, too, had demanded the scrapping of the Ganga Expressway project, saying that it was a conspiracy to render farmers unemployed and landless and that it would also expose large parts of the state to environmental hazards.
The project was expected to affect around 1,000 villages that would come under the expressway?s ?right of way? plan, apart from several more that would have been impacted by the proposed projects along the highway. With protests over land acquisition becoming more and more virulent and a change of guard in the offing in UP as well, it is being said that the concessionaire, too, was not very keen to invest in the project at this juncture.
