At the latest ground-breaking ceremony for Rs 65,000 crore projects in Lucknow on Sunday, absence of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, who is the local Member of Parliament, was noticed by all. Though, people close to him said that Singh was out of the country and therefore could not attend the event, but what was conspicuous was his absence even from the posters and banners of the event. During the first ground-breaking ceremony held in July last year, Singh had accompanied Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was the chief guest. Singh was then Union Home Minister. This time, it was current Home Minister Amit Shah who was the chief guest. Flock Vigil After Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Neeraj Shekhar quit the party and resigned as Rajya Sabha member to join the BJP earlier this month, both the SP and BSP have turned suspicious about several of their MPs in the Upper House jumping the ship as their terms draw to an end. Among eight of the Rajya Sabha members from Uttar Pradesh whose tenure will come to an end in November next year, four are from the SP and two from BSP. With SP and BSP both lacking enough numbers in the UP Assembly to send them back to Parliament, speculation are rife that more SP, BSP MPs may quit their parties to join the BJP who now a huge majority in the Assembly. Samajwadi Party is learnt to have alerted its core team to keep a vigil on the movement and activities of its MLAs and MLCs. On Saturday, party MLC Ravi Shankar ‘Pappu’, who happens to be Shekhar’s cousin also joined the BJP yesterday. The SP top leadership is believed to have assigned a group of young leaders in the party the job of listing its “weak” legislators who could fall prey to BJP’s “allurement”. Priyanka Effect The Congress, which had been missing from ground-level protests for the past few years in Uttar Pradesh, has become suddenly active after party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra decided to take up the cause of victims of Sonbhadra killings and sat on a dharna in Mirzapur despite without electricity after she was stopped from meeting the victims. Taking a cue from Priyanka’s dharna, Congress leaders, led by state unit vice-president Muti Ur Rehman, last week protested against SP leader Azam Khan over alleged land grabbing amid heavy rainfall in Rampur. Completely drenched, he then reached the district collectorate and spoke to reporters regarding the party’s demand of an ED and CBI probe into the allegations against Azam Khan. Rough Ride At a time, when the state is aiming towards creating one of the largest networks of expressways, some of the recent accidents on the two existing expressways — Lucknow-Agra Expressway and Yamuna Expressway — have finally made state government realise the fact that apart from taking credit for the projects, traffic management and roadside medical aids are equally important. While the traffic management system was planned for Lucknow-Agra expressway, but even before its tender for the same could be finalised, the Lok Sabha elections were announced. As a result, even as plans are afoot for four new expressways — Purvanchal, Bundelkhand, Gorakhpur and Ganga — the government has first decided to first address the problem of accidents on the existing ones. Following its investigation into frequent accidents on the expressways, the government has realised that that smooth drives on the expressways at night make the drivers fall asleep at the wheel, leading to several accidents. So the government has now decided to install rumble strips after every 15 km on these expressways. According to experts, it would serve the dual purpose of restricting the speed and also waking up the driver.
