Lucknow, Aug. 11 -- The contractor's claim that parts of the newly inaugurated Lucknow-Kanpur Expressway witnessed repeated road settlements, cracks and surface failures due to heavy rain has come under the scanner as the districts concerned-Lucknow and Unnao-received deficient rainfall this monsoon.

This key question has arisen even as an IIT Kharagpur team led by K Sudhakar Reddy collected around 50 samples from seven different locations in a 45-km greenfield stretch of the expressway, which was inaugurated on July 13 and opened to motorists a day later.

Data for the expressway corridor indicates that the area has received around 29% to 43% less rainfall than normal, raising a question mark on the contractor PNC Infratech's "heavy rai...