PM Modi to attend UP's third ground breaking ceremony on Friday

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be attending the third “groundbreaking” ceremony in Uttar Pradesh on Friday that aims to draw investments of over Rs 80,000 crore into the state. This is the third such event held in last four years to get underway the foundation-laying of major infrastructure projects in the state. Gautam Adani, Kumar Mangalam Birla, Sajjan Jindal, and Anant Ambani are among the bigwigs from the corporate world who are slated to attend the event. ”The groundbreaking will see investment of Rs 80,000 crore, which is a record,” Industrial Development Minister Nand Gopal Gupta ”Nandi” told reporters here Thursday.

The investments will fund at least 805 projects in the Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprise (MSME) sector, 275 in agriculture and allied industries, and 65 in pharmaceuticals and medical supplies, an official release issued here said. Among other projects, there will be six related to education worth Rs 1,183 crore, seven related to dairy worth Rs 489 crore, and six in animal husbandry worth Rs 224 crore, the release said.

The state has 90 lakh MSMEs — the highest — that constitute 14.2 per cent of all such projects in the country. In groundbreaking ceremony 3.0, a total of Rs 4,459 crore will be pumped into new MSMEs being set up in the state.

Two of these units will be started in Agra, three in Aligarh, two in Amethi, one in Ayodhya, seven in Barabanki, two in Bareilly, one in Chandauli, one in Etawah, two in Fatehpur, one in Firozabad, and 40 in Gautam Budh Nagar and Ghaziabad, among other places the state. The cash will flow to fund seven data centres worth Rs 19,928 crore, and 13 infrastructure projects worth 6,632 crore, the statement said.

Projects in agriculture and allied industries will get Rs 11,297 crore, IT and electronics Rs 7,876 crore, and manufacturing Rs 6,227 crore, it said.

All roads leading up to the Indira Gandhi Pratishthan in Gomti Nagar, where the event is going to be held on Friday, have been spruced up with painting of street light poles and the divider. Arrangement of special lights too has been made to create a festival-like mood. Elaborate security is being ensured at the venue with heavy deployment of police personnel. The first groundbreaking ceremony was held on July 29, 2018 and second one on July 28, 2019. The events were held to bring into effect the MoUs signed during the UP Investors Summit, held on February 21-22, 2018.

During the first groundbreaking ceremony, 81 projects worth more than Rs 61,500 crore went underway, while in the second in series, foundation of 290 projects with investments of more than Rs 67,000 crore was laid.