Lucknow receives thanks for voting BJP to power

LUCKNOW, March 15: With the decks being cleared for Atal Behari Vajpayee to be sworn in as the Prime Minister, the Uttar Pradesh government ...

LUCKNOW, March 15: With the decks being cleared for Atal Behari Vajpayee to be sworn in as the Prime Minister, the Uttar Pradesh government has also given the go-ahead to an ambitious project for developing his constituency Lucknow into a model city.

The task of transforming Lucknow to a model city has been entrusted to the Urban Development Minister Lalji Tandon who has already given instructions for widening of roads. He has also taken tempos, a major source of air and noise pollution, off the roads. The project also includes a six-lane road from the Lucknow airport to Chinhat, bordering the nearby Barabanki district.

Government sources said that in a bid to develop Lucknow into a model capital on the lines of Bangalore and Hyderabad, issues of potable water, pollution, stray animals and pitiable condition of parks are being taken with priority.

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"Lucknow residents should realise the importance of electing a Prime Minister. The electorate did their job in ensuring a record victory for Vajpayeeji. Nowit’s turn of the state government to provide better facilities to them," said the minister.

The government plans to replace tempos with pollution-free buses on busy routes, not allow any new construction on the track from Hussainganj to Nishatganj and complete a ring road around the city to ease off the traffic burden from the main roads.

A private firm has agreed to ply special pollution-free buses while NGO and the general public have voluntarily adopted more than 40 parks for upkeep.

To tap the potable water crisis, directions have been issued to check illegal water connections. Money will be earned from making such connections legal.

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Efforts are on to float a corpus fund of about Rs 1200 crore for development in major cities of Uttar Pradesh. The money for the fund will come from selling land freed recently from encroachers.