Kamlesh Kumar Dhuriya has been selling laiya chana outside Prayagraj’s Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology (MNIT) for over a decade.

“Just a few years back, there used to be a traffic jam here everyday from 4 o'clock in the evening to 9 o’clock at night. If an ambulance got stuck here, there was no hope of it reaching the hospital in time. People died on the way. Since the day this road has been widened, there has not been any traffic jam here,” Dhuriya said, with Manoj Kumar, a temporary employee of MNIT, nodding in approval.

“Zameen-aasman ka antar hai (there's a drastic change),” Kumar added.

Dhuriya’s and Kumar’s comments came as no surprise. As this correspondent crisscrossed Purvanchal — the eastern part of Uttar Pradesh — during the Lok Sabha elections, the state government’s road infrastructure push was clearly visible, and its effect palpable, as a large number of people echoed similar sentiments.

“Were roads ever this good? I don’t remember seeing a road better than this in my life,” said Gangesh Gond, who has a small transportation set-up in Phulpur’s Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative mandi. Gond was referring to State Highway 7 that links Prayagraj and Gorakhpur.

Nearly 250 km away, in Gorakhpur’s Campierganj, Phool Chand Nishad, who works in the construction sector in the Gulf, said, “The speed of development in this region has doubled. You can see new roads being constructed wherever you look.”

It was clear that this sentiment was translating into votes, as these men had told this correspondent in the first week of May that they were supporting the BJP. Of course, better roads may not have been the only reason why they were selecting the BJP over its rivals, but it was definitely one of the important ones.



Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath knows this and has decided to double down on his efforts.

In a meeting on 29 May, just five days after the election results, Adityanath brought forward the deadlines for the completion of four expressway projects in the state to make sure they are completed in time for him to add these as the achievements of the state government when the state goes to polls next in 2022.

Following up on 2 June, Chief Secretery Anup Chandra Pandey inspected the under-construction Purvanchal Expressway from air. Adityanath wants the 350 kilometer long expressway to be complete by August next year and work on two other projects — the Bundelkhand Expressway and the Gorakhpur Link Expressway — to start in three months. He has also ordered survey work for the ambitious Ganga Expressway linking Meerut and Prayagraj to begin in the next three months.