BHUBANESWAR: With delay in allotment of land and grant of clearances emerging as major bottlenecks in timely execution of railway infrastructure projects in Odisha, Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal has sought intervention of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik for clearing the hurdles.
Listing out 14 projects, Goyal in a letter to the Chief Minister said handing over land parcels to the Railways is a major challenge before the State in supplementation of the infrastructure projects.
“Indian Railways are executing a large number of infrastructure projects of new line, gauge conversion, doubling of rail lines, transmission line works pertaining to railway electrification projects and public private partnership projects. Many of these projects are getting delayed due to land acquisition, forest and wildlife clearance and shifting of utilities,” the letter said.
Noting that the Khurda-Balangir rail line project (289 km) is not making desired progress due to delay in acquisition of land, Goyal said the state government is yet to hand over 2988.23 acre of land to the Railways. Besides, diversion of forest land and statutory clearances for 1547 acre of forest land are pending with the authorities concerned.
Though the 82-km Haridaspur-Paradip broad gauge line was sanctioned in 1995-96 and the PPP project entered into a concession agreement with the Railway Ministry in 2007, only 82.75 per cent of the project has been completed.
The initial project cost was Rs 598 crore and it has been revised to Rs 2681.77 crore.
The project implemented by Rail Vikas Nigam Limited (RVNL) was scheduled to be completed by June 2019.
Out of the 1503.38 acre of private land, 1470.12 acre have been acquired while 195.83 acre out of 235 acre of government land acquired.
The executing agencies are facing similar land problems for Angul-Sukinda, Talcher-Bimalagarh, Sambalpur-Talcher, Bhadrak-Nirgundi, Jarapada-Budhapanka, Budhapanka-Salegaon and Koraput-Singapur rail line projects.
Holding the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) responsible for delay in laying the third line between Khurda Road and Barang to decongest rail traffic on the busy Bhubaneswar-Howrah section, Goyal said the NHAI is yet to float tender for construction of a road overbridge despite deposit of fund four and a half years ago.
He said the Railways have already deposited `10.45 crore including the revised demand of Rs 14.96 crore raised by NHAI.
The national agency is yet to dismantle and build the RoB.
The Union Minister also requested the Chief Minister to facilitate flow of power under open access system as deemed licensee for the Indian Railways in the State which has not been allowed by the State despite repeated reminders.
Letter highlights
14 projects hanging fire
289 km Khurda-Balangir rail line not progressing
82 km Haridaspur-Paradip broad gauge line incomplete
3rd line between Khurda Road and Barang delayed