Gupta’s comparison is unfair, and the facts don’t quite add up. Maharashtra is still among the top states in the country in the area of infrastructure. However, since it’s a large state, its infrastructure development is more diversified, comprising smaller projects that have a strong impact.

Maharashtra was actually India’s first state to build an expressway. The Mumbai-Pune Expressway was initiated by then Public Works Department minister Nitin Gadkari, and was built during Manohar Joshi’s tenure as Chief Minister. It was launched in 1997 and opened in phases, with the final section being launched in 2003, when the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) combine no longer governed Maharashtra. It set a benchmark of sorts for the nation, acting as a precursor to Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s National Highway Development Project (NHDP).

The significant achievement of the expressway was that it managed to set a high bar for highway development, one that leaders in Uttar Pradesh may not be able to emulate as easily. Why? Six-lane wide, concrete, with five tunnels running through the Western Ghats, and all this done back in the late 1990s - that’s no mean task. None of Uttar Pradesh’s expressways match up because the terrain in the north-Indian state is mostly flat. Frankly, building a bridge over the Ganga would be the challenge.

It’s worth noting, however, that the 302km-long Agra-Lucknow Expressway is, in many ways, an extension of the Yamuna Expressway, connecting Greater Noida and Agra, which was initiated and built under the erstwhile Mayawati government. Also, the state’s contribution to National Highways is marginal. Uttar Pradesh’s Public Works Department (PWD) merely maintains two-laned national highway stretches that aren’t covered under the NHDP. And as for the quality of the roads, the less said, the better. The current government can be said to have inherited the Yamuna corridor from the previous administration and extended it to the state capital. The proposed 348km Samajwadi Purvanchal Expressway, connecting Lucknow to Ballia, too can be considered an extension of this project.

Maharashtra, on the other hand, has been a front runner in infrastructure development and for various reasons. If one goes back to Vajpayee’s time, one may recall that a part of the section of the Golden Quardrilateral connecting Mumbai and Ahmedabad was built by the Maharashtra PWD and Gujarat PWD. In addition, two major sections of the corridor from Mumbai to Bengaluru were built by the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC).

The western Indian state is also home to India’s first open-sea cable-stayed bridge (the Bandra-Worli Sea Link) as well as the eighth densest metro rail corridor. The 11km long Mumbai Metro Line 1, operational since 2014, took nearly a decade to be built under the previous government.

Unlike Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra did not inherit anything noteworthy in terms of infrastructure. The only major projects that the Fadnavis government inherited was the long-delayed metro line in Mumbai and the Sion-Panvel Expressway in Navi Mumbai. Besides these projects, all others have proved to be a damp squib.

The present government has not exactly had a smooth ride in the last two-and-half years. The BJP government has been criticised constantly by its ally, the Shiv Sena, once going so far as to suggest the possibility of midterm polls.