Explained: What Exactly Went Wrong With The Lucknow-Agra Expressway And The Yash Bharti Awards

Little over a month in office and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has left the bureaucracy breathless with his pace. His initial review meetings continued till after midnight and left the officers sleep-starved.

If his style of working made headlines, so did his decisions to get to the bottom of Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav’s pet projects looking for corruption and track down those who looted the public exchequer.

The former chief minister’s dream project, the Lucknow-Agra Expressway, was the first to be put under the lens, followed by cycle tracks and now the Yash Bharti awards.

In his budget, the government had sanctioned only Rs 3,000 crores for the 302-km long expressway. The green field project was eventually completed at an estimated cost of Rs 15,000 crore.

At one of the Parivartan rallies, minister of state for railways Manoj Sinha alleged that “while the Central government gets 1 km national highway constructed at a cost of Rs 18 crore, the Akhilesh Yadav government has made 1 km of the expressway at a disproportionately high cost of Rs 30.78 crore”.

There were rumours that officers and netas had minted money in the project. As there were no protests or litigations, the rumours died a natural death. The government and the IAS officer heading the project were extolled for their land acquisition model.

It was alleged that interested parties had purchased the land along the expressway at cheaper rates before the project was announced and later made a quick buck by selling it to the government at four times the market rate.

In at least one district, the district magistrate was said to have increased the circle rate, price of land fixed by the government, and lowered it immediately after land was acquired for the country’s first green field project.

With 2,000 hectares of land in 232 villages having been acquired for the project, somebody must have made hundreds of crore if the allegations turn out to be true.

The Yogi government has now ordered that the registries of all the land acquired for the project must be scrutinised. Detailed information has been sought from the district magistrates (DMs) of Lucknow, Agra, Firozabad, Mainpuri, Etawah, Auraiya, Kannauj, Kanpur Nagar, Unnao and Hardoi through which the expressway passes.

The district magistrates are to look into the ownership of land at least one year before it was acquired, and if it was sold to someone in that period, then who purchased it.

While the DMs will be looking into the land deals, the government agency RITES will inquire into the cost and quality factors.

The allegation of land use being changed fraudulently surfaced after government officials asked the residents of Nagla Chitey in Bachhela Bachheli village of Firozabad to return the compensation paid to them. Land was purchased from them at rates varying from Rs 800 to Rs 8,000 per square metre as it came under the abadi (habitation) category. Just as the rich villagers started spending the money, the Firozabad district administration served recovery notices to 22 villagers claiming they were paid compensation which was up to three times higher than the rate fixed.

The villagers approached the Allahabad High Court where the government stated that “consolidation department staff had colluded” with the villagers to notify the land as abadi. Luckily for the villagers, the high court dismissed the government’s plea and quashed the recovery notice.

The other decision of the previous government which raised eyebrows even earlier was to give Yash Bharti awards mindlessly. The most talked about instances are those of the lady compering the award presentation ceremony sending a chit to Akhilesh Yadav, who immediately asked her name to be included in the list. A village pradhan, a pujari associated with the Akhilesh family were the other beneficiaries. Even Narendra Rana of the Bharatiya Janata Party was a recipient. Four award presentation ceremonies were held in 2016 to give Yash Bharti to 131 people. It seemed that there were no criteria to select the awardees and even the numbers were not fixed. When the Culture Department’s budget fell short, it borrowed money from the Lucknow Development Authority for giving away the prize money.

What remains to be seen is the government’s seriousness at unraveling the corruption, if any, and punishing those involved in it. At least the Yogi government should not take a leaf out of Akhilesh’s book who promised to probe graft charges against Naseemuddin Siddiqui and then suffered amnesia.