Yogi Adityanath government has allocated funds for the construction of two new expressways in Uttar Pradesh.
In the budget presented today (22 February), the Bharatiya Janata Party-led state government has set aside Rs 235 crores for the two e-ways — Jhansi Link Expressway and Chitrakoot Link Expressway.
The two expressways will link the towns they will originate from — Jhansi and Chitrakoot Dham — with the Bundelkhand Expressway.
As its name suggests, the expressway passes through the districts in Uttar Pradesh’s Bundelkhand — Chitrakoot, Banda, Hamirpur, Mahoba, Jalaun and Auraiya. It originates in Bharatkoop on National Highway 35, which is also called the Varanasi-Banda road, in the Chitrakoot district, and ends near Kudrail village in Etawah district on the Lucknow-Agra Expressway.
It links the semi-arid and drought-prone region to the National Capital Region via the Lucknow-Agra and Yamuna (Agra-Noida) expressways.
The Bundelkhand region, spread across south-western Uttar Pradesh and northern Madhya Pradesh, is electorally important for the BJP. In the 2017 assembly election, the party won all 19 Vidhan Sabha seats in the seven districts that form Uttar Pradesh’s part of Bundelkhand.
The party bagged all the four Lok Sabha seats in the region in 2019, repeating its performance of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. In the 2022 assembly election, the BJP managed to retain 16 of the 19 Vidhan Sabha seats.
The two new expressways are critical for the success of the UP Defence Corridor, which was announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharama in the 2018-19 budget. Jhansi and Chitrakoot form two of the six major nodes of the UP defence corridor and are the only districts from Bundelkhand which have been made part of the project.
The two expressways are expected to benefit the tourism industry.
Bundelkhand is flanked in the east and the west by the two most popular tourist circuits in the the country. To the east lies the Prayagraj-Sarnath-Varanasi tourism triangle and the Agra-Mathura-Fatehpur Sikri circuit lies to the west of the region. Jhansi and Chitrakoot, two major tourism destinations in Bundelkhand, can attract tourists from both these circuits.
Also Read: How Bundelkhand Expressway Will Spur Economic Activity In A Region Long Ignored By Delhi And Lucknow