A freshly inaugurated expressway crumbling within weeks — and workers reportedly using electric fans to speed-dry the repair patches. Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav seized on that image on Thursday, 6 August 2026, to launch a sharp attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party's infrastructure record in Uttar Pradesh.

Posting on X, Yadav wrote: 'ये है भाजपाई तरक़्क़ी की नई हवा' — 'This is the new wind of BJP's progress' — a sardonic opener that set the tone for a blistering critique. He alleged that a road inaugurated just days ago was already in need of repair, and that fans were being deployed to dry the patching work at 'express speed' — a detail he called 'laughable' (हास्यास्पद).

The crumbling expressway allegation

Yadav questioned who would risk travelling on an expressway whose surface, in his words, had begun to 'give out' within two to three weeks of opening. The implication is stark: if the road cannot hold for a month, what does that say about the quality of construction and the public funds spent on it?

The visual of a fan being used to dry fresh tarmac on a supposedly new expressway — whether taken literally or as symbolic shorthand — became the rhetorical centrepiece of the post. It is the kind of concrete, absurd detail that travels fast and lands hard in political discourse.

'Atal Progress Way' — scheme on paper or road on ground?

Yadav also turned his fire on a project called the 'Atal Progress Way' (अटल प्रोग्रेस वे), raising pointed questions about whether it will ever move beyond a government scheme document. 'Will it remain only in the plan, or will it ever be built — or has it already been divided up on paper?' he asked, using the phrase 'हिस्सा-बाँट' (carve-up / divvying up) to suggest funds may have been siphoned before a single brick was laid.

The research background on this specific project is limited to what Yadav himself has stated; the scheme's current status cannot be independently verified from available information. What is clear is that Yadav is using it as a second front in the same argument: that BJP-era infrastructure in Uttar Pradesh is either poorly built or never built at all.

A familiar battleground — UP's roads and who gets credit

Infrastructure has long been the sharpest terrain of political competition between the Samajwadi Party and the BJP in Uttar Pradesh. Yadav's own government (2012–2017) built the Agra-Lucknow Expressway, inaugurated in 2016, and the SP has consistently used expressway construction as a marker of its development legacy.

The BJP, in power in Lucknow since 2017 and at the Centre since 2014, has launched multiple road and expressway projects of its own, positioning them as evidence of superior governance. Yadav's post is a direct counter-punch to that narrative — closing with a line that doubles as a campaign slogan: 'भाजपा राज में हुआ हर निर्माण चलता कम है… धँसता, ढहता, गिरता ज़्यादा है' — 'Every structure built under BJP rule walks less… it sinks, collapses, and falls more.'

Whether the Uttar Pradesh Public Works Department responds to the specific allegations — or whether the viral fan-on-tarmac image prompts an official inquiry — will determine how far this moment travels beyond a social media post.