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Big news has come to light regarding the construction of the much awaited Gorakhpur-Shamli Greenfield Economic Corridor directly connecting East to West in Uttar Pradesh. The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has stepped up preparations to acquire additional land for the construction of supporting structures like main carriageway, overbridge (ROB), service lanes and toll plazas of the expressway. In this sequence, 34.1015 hectares of additional land will be acquired in 8 identified villages of Siddharthnagar district. NHAI has sent an official letter to the district administration directing them to immediately start the process of on-site verification and survey of the land. While this step will speed up the project, it will also pave the way for the affected farmers to get appropriate compensation as per the government rules.
According to the report released by NHAI, the complete blueprint for additional land acquisition has been prepared under Bansi tehsil of Siddharthnagar district. For faster and safe movement of vehicles on the expressway, there was a need for additional buffer zones and technical space near toll plazas, service roads and railway overbridges (ROBs). To fulfill this need, eight major villages of Bansi tehsil have been identified. These villages include Mahokhwa, Bahadurpur, Bhatauli, Soravamafi, Suhaikanpurwa, Aklohi, Parsa and Sirsia. The administration says that the process of acquiring a total of 34.1015 hectares of land in these villages has been started.
To make land acquisition completely transparent and to ensure that no farmer’s rights are violated, a joint team of Special Land Acquisition Department, Accountants of the concerned tehsils and technical officers of NHAI has been formed. This team will go from village to village and do on-site measurement and tally of Khatauni based on the Gata numbers recorded in the gazette. The main objective of this on-site verification is to ensure that the actual land owners (tenants) are correctly identified, so that the compensation amount can be transferred directly into their bank accounts without any disputes or middlemen. The administration has also made it clear that the presence and consent of the farmers will be taken full care of during the measurement.
Farmers are going to get double benefit from this acquisition. The first is that under the Land Acquisition Act, farmers will get compensation many times the fixed formula based on the rural circle rate, which will bring huge capital into their hands. The second and biggest benefit will be that the market prices of the remaining agricultural land located along the expressway will increase manifold. In areas where land prices were low earlier due to lack of roads, dhabas, warehouses, logistics parks, petrol pumps and commercial shops will start opening as soon as the expressway interchanges and service roads are built. This will open avenues of employment and new business at the local level for the youth of farmers’ families.
Gorakhpur-Shamli Expressway is proposed to be constructed in two phases in Siddharthnagar district. The total length of this high speed corridor within the district limits will be about 62.25 kilometers. 20 villages of Bansi tehsil, 28 villages of Dumariyaganj tehsil and 15 villages of Itwa tehsil were included in the first phase plan. Now with the acquisition of land in these 8 additional villages of Bansi, the infrastructure of the project will become stronger. The preliminary notification of Section 3-A had already been issued, and now steps are being taken to declare the award after on-site verification.
The proposed Gorakhpur-Shamli Greenfield Expressway is an approximately 700 to 750 km long 6-lane access-controlled highway, which will be expandable to 8 lanes in the future. This expressway will directly connect about 22 districts of Uttar Pradesh. After its construction, Terai and Purvanchal districts like Gorakhpur, Sant Kabirnagar, Siddharthnagar, Balrampur, Bahraich, Gonda and Shravasti will be directly connected to Moradabad, Bareilly, Bijnor, Saharanpur, Muzaffarnagar, Shamli and Delhi-NCR-Haryana border. At present, it takes a long time of 12 to 15 hours to go from Gorakhpur to Shamli or Western UP, which will reduce to just 7 to 8 hours after the opening of this expressway.
The biggest economic benefit from the construction of the expressway will be to the farmers and small traders of the Terai region. Purvanchal’s black salt, rice, seasonal vegetables and fruits can now be easily delivered to the big markets of Delhi, Haryana and Punjab within a few hours. Due to reduction in freight cost, local agricultural products will get better market prices. Also, being developed as an industrial corridor, there is a strong possibility of new factories and food processing units being established on this entire route. The aim of NHAI is to complete all the formalities of land acquisition within the stipulated time and start the construction work.