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 PM to 9 PM. 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 many echoed similar sentiments.

“Were roads in the state ever this good,” said Gangesh Gond, who runs a transportation business in Phulpur’s Indian Farmers Fertilizer 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 this year that they were supporting the BJP. Of course, better roads may not have been the only reason why they were choosing the BJP over others, but it was definitely one of the important ones.

Six months later, it is more apparent than ever that Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath knows his infrastructure push has worked, and he appears to be doubling down on it.

In November, his cabinet cleared the decks for two road projects, the 296-km long Bundelkhand Expressway and 91-km Gorakhpur Link Expressway, even as work continues in full swing on the 340-km long Purvanchal Expressway.

Uttar Pradesh has the country’s longest expressway network with two operational expressways, the 302-km Lucknow-Agra Expressway and the 165-km long Yamuna Expressway.

Apart from the two approved and one under-construction expressways, the state also plans to build a 1,020-km long expressway along the Ganga. The nodal agency for these projects, Uttar Pradesh Expressways Industrial Development Authority (UPEIDA), is also working on many more proposals.