Expressing happiness that people were willing to provide land for the Ganga Expressway project to the administration, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath instructed officials to speed up the process of purchase of remaining 1,221 hectares of land for the project.

Till date, 5,261 hectares of land has been purchased from 63,362 farmers which accounts for 80 per cent of the total requirement of the project.

The 594-km-long Ganga Expressway project of UP Expressways Industrial Development Authority (UPEIDA) is an approved six-lane access-controlled road with a route alignment connecting National Highway 334 in Meerut with National Highway 2 at Prayagraj bypass in Prayagraj. This Greenfield project was first announced to connect Noida with Ballia during the Mayawati regime in 2008. Since then, the project in Phase 1 has been revised to connect Meerut with Prayagraj.

In Phase 2, the expressway will be extended by 110 km to Tigri on Uttar Pradesh-Uttarakhand border and by 314 km to Ballia near Varanasi. In February 2021, the Uttar Pradesh government decided to extend the project on either end — from Meerut to Haridwar and from Prayagraj to Varanasi from the get-go. The total estimated cost of the project is around Rs 40,000 crore.