Uttar Pradesh govt to pay Rs 180 crore as bonus for completing Purvanchal E-way early

The Uttar Pradesh government would be paying Rs 180 crore as a bonus to contractors for completing the 341 km-long Purvanchal Expressway before time. The expressway has been an important showpiece project for the government before the elections and was inaugurated by the Prime Minister last November.

News18 has reviewed the minutes of a board meeting of the UP Expressways Industrial Development Authority (UPEIDA) held on February 16 in which it is mentioned that two contractors involved the clause ‘bonus for early completion’ in the contract to seek Rs 180.15 crore from the government. The project from Lucknow to Ghazipur, connecting Awadh to Purvanchal, was completed by the contractors 150 days early from the scheduled completion date, as per these minutes.

UP government claims to have saved Rs 1,268 crore on the project. The contract had a clause that contractors would be paid a bonus equivalent to 0.04% of the contract price for each day of early completion from the scheduled completion date, subject to a maximum of 6% of the contract price. “If the bonus is paid as demanded by the contractors, it would be within the ambit of the scheme approved by the government,” the minutes said, adding the board has approved this proposal.

This Expressway was completed ahead of time despite the Covid pandemic when the availability of labour was an issue.

Another E-way to be completed early

Another key project, the 296 km-long Bundelkhand Expressway from Chitrakoot to Etawah in Uttar Pradesh is also slated to be completed over six months of schedule, the minutes of the February 22 meeting read. This Expressway, divided into six sections, has a scheduled completion date of January 14, 2023. The Board was informed on February 22 that two sections of the expressway would be completed by end of this April, another this May and the rest by June this year.

The biggest expressway project in UP, Ganga Expressway from Meerut to Prayagraj, has seen 94 per cent land acquisition and is expected to be completed by 2025. The UP government is also executing the Gorakhpur Link Expressway from the Purvanchal Expressway. Earlier, the Akhilesh Yadav government had built the Agra-Lucknow Expressway in 2016.

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