BHUBANESWAR: As the fate of three railway projects in Odisha hangs in balance for a long time due to inordinate delay in land acquisition, the project monitoring group at the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has asked the Odisha government to resolve the issues by the end of this year.
While the much-awaited Khurda Road-Balangir railway line project was fast-tracked after the intervention of Union Minister for Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw that paved the way for the acquisition of 97 acres of land recently, the Centre has been pushing the State to facilitate land for early completion of other long pending railway projects.
The important projects that have caught attention include Talcher-Bimlagarh new railway line, Angul-Sukinda new line and Vizianagaram-Titlagarh third line. Sanctioned in 2003-04, while the 150-km Talcher-Bimlagarh line was to be completed by March 2022, only Rs 10 crore was provisioned for the `1,900 crore project in the 2021-22 budget as the track laying work has been stopped due to delay in land acquisition.
The 104-km Angul-Sukinda industrial corridor rail project being executed at a cost of Rs 1,500 crore under PPP mode by the joint venture company Angul Sukinda Railway Limited was also initially targeted for completion by June 2022.
Similarly, the completion period of the 264.6 km Vizianagaram and Titlagarh third line project, approved in 2016 was five years. The link will be an alternative route to the over-saturated Kharagpur-Jharsuguda section of Howrah-Mumbai Grand Trunk Route and Howrah-Chennai main line. But both the projects have been stuck due to want of land.
The monitoring group at the PMO came to know that acquisition of 192 acre of private land and 81 acre of government land in Deogarh, 100 ha of private land and 131 acre of government land in Sundargarh and 47 acre of government land, 180 acre of private land in Angul for the Talcher-Bimlagarh line have remained unresolved.For the Angul-Sukinda project, the acquisition of 4.61 acre of private land in Jajpur, 17.2 acre of private land in Dhenkanal and shifting/raising of overhead extra high tension lines are pending.
Although AP government has promised to acquire the land required for the Vizianagaram and Titlagarh project in its jurisdiction by December end, Odisha government during a recent meeting with the PMO group committed to resolving the issue pertaining to the acquisition of 11 acres of private land in Kalahandi and 21 ha of private land and seven ha government land in Rayagada by June 30, next year. The PMO has directed Chief Secretary Suresh Chandra Mahapatra to appoint a senior official as the nodal officer to ensure reduction in unnecessary delays for land acquisition.