Punjab's devp on priority list of Centre: Gadkari

Union Minister Nitin Gadkari today said Punjab's overall development is on the priority list of the NDA government and claimed it will carry out the works in five years, what Congress could not do in its "decades" of rule.
"Development works worth thousands of crores of rupees are already going on in the state and many more are in the offing," he said while addressing a rally on the occasion of the foundation stone laying of three development projects worth Rs 3,212 crore, here.
These projects include a new elevated road for Ludhiana city, four-laned Ladhowal Byepass and four-laning of Ludhiana-Kharar Road.

The Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways was accompanied by Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal and other senior leaders of the SAD-BJP alliance.
"The NDA government at the Centre is committed for the overall development of the country. Work on road projects worth around Rs 30,000 crore is going on in Punjab and in the next three years, road infrastructure and highway projects worth around Rs 1.5 lakh crore would be carried out in the state," Gadkari said.
On this occasion, he announced two new expressway projects for the state, which include a Rs 6,000 crore worth 508-km long Jalandhar-Ajmer Expressway and Rs 60,000 crore worth 729-km long Delhi-Amritsar Expressway.

The Jalandhar-Ajmer expressway project would benefit those travelling to Mumbai as they would not have to go through Delhi, which will save a lot of time, the Union Minister said.

The Delhi-Amritsar Expressway would pass through Jind, Barnala and Moga and work on this project would start shortly, Nitin Gadkari said and also announced Ludhiana-Hambran Road as national highway.
Addressing the gathering, Sukhbir hit out at state Congress chief Amarinder Singh saying he himself has announced that the upcoming state elections would be his last one and this shows he does not believe in serving people.
"This clearly shows that for him (Amarinder), politics is just a business and he does not believe in serving people because there is no age limit for serving the people," Sukhbir said.

He accused AAP of being "anti-Punjab" and alleged, "They have also been involved in several cases of desecration of religious books and have been neck deep in corruption."
"Delhi Chief Minister and AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal is making rounds of the poll-bound state "with a clear agenda of becoming the Chief Minister here," he alleged.