With an eye on assembly polls, Akhilesh tightens screws on flagship projects

Select projects spanning nine departments incorporated in UP Development Agenda for 2015-16

With Uttar Pradesh elections less than two years away, the Akhilesh Yadav government has started to tighten the screws on the progress of its flagship projects.

Most of these projects have been given the deadline of completion before the 2017 state polls to showcase them as achievements of the incumbent regime.

The prominent of such projects include Lucknow metro rail, Agra-Lucknow expressway, trans-Ganga project near Kanpur, IT City in Lucknow, Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) projects, linking all district headquarters with four-lane roads etc.

These select projects spanning nine departments have been incorporated in the UP Development Agenda for 2015-16, which was unveiled by Yadav on February 11.

The Agenda serves as a policy framework to senior bureaucrats. The milestones for each department have been attuned to the development agenda, so that quarterly targets and timelines could be achieved and assessed.

The nine departments are energy, industry, finance, agriculture, human resources development, medical, social, rural development and urban development.

Meanwhile, UP chief secretary Alok Ranjan today chaired a meeting of senior officials here to review the progress of the state development agenda.

He directed officials to ensure that respective District Magistrates uploaded the progress report under their jurisdiction on the first of every month, so that it could be reviewed at his level before apprising the chief minister.

The officials have been told to make physical verification of projects to ensure the quality of works.

In the first two years of his regime, the Samajwadi Party government was more focused on fulfilling pre-poll promises, such as distribution of free laptops, unemployment dole, Kanya Vidya Dhan etc.

Now with UP elections due in the first quarter of calendar 2017, the government is giving priority to development projects to boost economy and create jobs.

These projects would help the party fend off anti-incumbency, especially in the backdrop of a resurgent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the likelihood of a high octane electioneering in UP, where a direct fight between SP and BJP is most likely.