Industrial corridor parallel to the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (EDFC) will provide a big boost to the development and prosperity of Uttar Pradesh, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav said.

Yadav welcomed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's move of appointing an inter-ministerial group to launch the industrial corridor parallel to EDFC and added that it would accelerate industrial development in the state.

Speaking on the topic, Akhilesh said, "We are happy that the PM has agreed to our request and appointed an inter-ministerial group to go into the modalities of setting up of an industrial corridor parallel to the EDFC."

About Uttar Pradesh's contributions towards the corridor, the Chief Minister said that the state government had already provided the land for the project. He stressed that the idea was to make the most of the barren land by using it for industrial purposes.

The 1,840 km EDFC, which is called Amritsar-Delhi-Kolkata Industrial corridor, will pass through around a dozen districts in Uttar Pradesh, including, Saharanpur, Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, Ghaziabad, Gautum Budh Nagar, Aligarh, Bulandshahr, Agra Firozabad, Auraiya, Fatehpur, Allahabad and Mirzapur.

The corridor will ensure easy as well as timely transportation of raw material and finished goods to other parts of the country.