Akhilesh Yadav- My Way Is The Highway

With the inauguration of the Agra-Lucknow expressway, Akhilesh Yadav has reason to smile.

- Ashish Misra

Two years ago, a day after the 75th birthday of the Samajwadi Party (SP) supremo, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav held a grand celebration for his father to mark the event. Mulayam laid the foundation stone for the AgraLucknow expressway that very day, and as he took the dais to make a speech, he said: “Jab hum mukhyamantri thhe, tab shilanyas ke samay hi udghatan ki tareekh bhi tay ho jati thi (when I was chief minister, we would decide the inauguration date at the time of laying the foundation).” He then called upon Chakresh Jain, the director of one of the companies constructing the expressway, asking when the project would be complete. When Jain said it would take two years, Mulayam replied, “I am cutting two months. You have to complete this expressway in 22 months.”

Construction began in earnest in January the following year. 23 months later, on the eve of his 77th birthday, he got his wish: amidst a ceremony that included Sukhoi and Mirage fighter jets performing test landings, Mulayam inaugurated the 302-kilometre-long Agra-Lucknow expressway. Incidentally, it was Mulayam who, as defence minister in the H.D. Deve Gowda government, had cleared the Sukhoi deal.