ROURKELA: The Indian Railways is adopting a techno-managerial approach to expedite the delay-ridden Bimlagarh-Talcher new rail line project.
Under the new approach, Railways is carrying out structural and fundamental changes by engaging domain experts to remove external hurdles and speed up the project.
The high-value linear rail line project worth Rs 1,928 crore with a total length of 149.700 km through Sundargarh, Deogarh and Angul districts has been delayed due to land acquisition and technical hurdles.
The first parcel of land for the project was acquired in 2012. But in the last one decade, hardly 41 per cent of private and 51 per cent of government land could be acquired despite East Coast Railway (ECoR) providing over Rs 422 crore to the Odisha government for the purpose. Now, the cost and time overrun in the project is 37 per cent and 525 per cent respectively.
Sources said that at many places, land oustees despite having received total payment are yet to relocate. In a few cases like Keshabpur and Bilinda villages in Angul districts, land disputes are pending in the Orissa High Court since 2013.
Core member of Bimlagarh-Talcher rail line action committee Bimal Bisi said that under the techno-managerial initiative, the ECoR is hiring highly experienced professionals for systematic acquisition of land since November 2021. Acting as force multipliers, these experienced professionals with domain expertise would enable the removal of all legal and administrative hurdles for expeditious implementation of the project.
A top ECoR official informed that the recent adoption of MS project software is helping the authorities prepare schedules, assign tasks, track progress and analyse workloads. The ECoR is adopting tailor-made approaches to remove hurdles in construction work and also planning to award individual contract packages to meet the project objectives.
He further said the new approach is yielding results as four out of six major external hurdles have been resolved. These include breakthroughs in the Baruan hill tunnel and the commencement of work on launching Brahmani Bridge girders.
To create a synchronised and highly efficient team, ECoR officers lacking aptitude in project handling are being relocated, he added.
Sources said that barring the court cases, other issues delaying the project have been brought under significant control in the past few months. So far, only 17.62 km stretch of the project from Talcher to Sunakhani has been completed. For the Sunakhani-Samal-Parbil stretch of 22.305 km, the completion target is August 2022 subject to clearance of 1.5 km which is stuck due to litigation in court.
Similarly, work is progressing sporadically in patches for another 8.20 km till Khamar. For the remaining 101 km from Khamar to Bimlagarh, the revised completion target is likely to go beyond March 2025.
The rail line project was sanctioned in 2003-04 and its implementation started 10 years back.