LUCKNOW, June 4 -- The Uttar Pradesh Cabinet on Wednesday approved a proposal to introduce 1,725 new air-conditioned electric buses in 18 metropolitan towns, including all 17 municipal corporation areas and Noida, where the buses will also connect the newly inaugurated Noida International Airport at Jewar. The decision was taken at the meeting chaired by chief minister Yogi Adityanath. The Cabinet also approved proposals for setting up five new jails in Moradabad, Lalitpur, Auraiya, Kanpur Nagar and Bhadohi districts, besides clearing the maize procurement policy for 2025-26. Briefing media persons, minister for finance Suresh Khanna said the state Cabinet cleared 24 out of 25 proposals on its agenda. Urban development and energy minister AK Sharma said the 1,725 new e-buses would supplement the 743 electric buses already operating in the state and would also serve peripheral areas. The project will be implemented on a public-private partnership (PPP) model at an estimated cost of Rs.1,852 crore. Sharma said these would include 725 mini-buses (9 metres) costing Rs.90 lakh each and 1,000 large buses costing Rs.1.20 crore each. He said the selected operator would be provided subsidies of Rs.35 lakh for each mini-bus and Rs.40 lakh for each large bus. Thus, the total burden on the state government would be only Rs.653 crore. He said the bidding criteria would be the amount that the operator would need to run the buses. The state government would meet the gap between the bidding amount and the actual fare collection through viability gap funding, he added. Sharma said special purpose vehicles (SPVs) have been formed to operate the e-buses in 16 municipal corporations while formation of an SPV is underway in Firozabad. Among the cities, Lucknow and Kanpur will get 300 buses each, Varanasi 250, Noida including the Jewar area 100, Agra 100, Ayodhya and Prayagraj 50 each, Mathura-Vrindavan 50, Aligarh 25, Firozabad 25, Saharanpur 25, Shahjahanpur 25 and Jhansi 25. Meanwhile, minister for jail Dara Singh Chauhan said chief minister Yogi Adityanath's initiative has brought down the overcrowding in the state's prisons. He said 40 of the state's 77 prisons are no longer overcrowded, while congestion has eased significantly in the remaining jails. Chauhan said the new jail in Moradabad having a capacity of 2,000 inmates would be built with a cost of Rs.386.91 crore. New prisons will also be constructed in Lalitpur (552 inmates, Rs.225.06 crore), Auraiya (1,056 inmates, Rs.264.96 crore), Kanpur Nagar (2,020 inmates, Rs.384.05 crore) and Bhadohi (574 inmates, Rs.209.18 crore). Minister for food, logistics and civil supplies Manoj Pandey said the minimum support price for procurement of maize has been increased from Rs.2225 per quintal to Rs.2,400 per quintal and the procurement would be made in select districts between June 15 and July 31, 2026. He added that 150 procurement centres would be opened and a target to procure 25000 metric tonne maize has been set....