Ten new kilometres to save twenty: a bypass towards Varanasi gets clearance in Mirzapur

Anyone who drives between Mirzapur and Varanasi knows the detour. Traffic coming off the Bhatauli bridge currently has to swing around on the Mirzapur–Aurai and Rewa–Varanasi roads, adding roughly twenty to twenty-two kilometres to a trip that ought to be short — extra time, extra fuel, and a queue at the crossings when the trucks pile up. That detour now has a fix on paper. The state government has approved a two-lane bypass of about ten kilometres running from the Bhatauli bridge to Amghat, at a cost of around seventy crore rupees. Roughly thirty-four crore of that is earmarked for buying land, felling trees, GST and allied work, with the remainder going into the road itself. The alignment is planned through Cherui Ram, Kakrahi, Bhuili, Devapur, Badauli Khurd and Devahi. Ten new kilometres, in other words, to save travellers about twenty. The public works department's executive engineer, Ashok Kumar, told reporters that the project was sent to the state and has now been cleared, and that the process of acquiring land has begun. Tree-felling follows once that is complete, and construction after that — so this is a clearance, not a ribbon-cutting, and no completion date has been announced. The stretch it should relieve, the Bhatauli–Kachhwan route, carries thousands of vehicles a day and jams when the load peaks. A separate proposal to widen that road by about four metres is still pending.

Compiled by HelloBanaras from public sources: News18 Hindi (Local18)