BHUBANESWAR: The Ministry of Coal has successfully mapped four railway projects in the PM Gati Shakti - Nation Master Plan portal under "High Impact" projects in Odisha and Jharkhand to develop multi-modal connectivity for faster evacuation of coal.
The Ministry announced on Thursday that it has undertaken 13 railway projects under PM Gati Shakti in order to develop multi-modal connectivity and identified missing infrastructure gaps for each of the projects.
"Four railway projects are successfully mapped in the Gati Shakti-Nation Master Plan portal under 'High Impact' projects. These will be developed in Odisha and Jharkhand. The projects will facilitate the movement of coal with rapid logistics and wider connectivity for all the commercial miners," said a statement from the Coal Ministry.
While the Ministry has not named the four projects, it is highly likely that the common railway corridor being developed jointly by Mahanadi Coalfields Limited (MCL), Indian Railway Construction Limited (IRCL) and Odisha Infrastructure Development Corporation (IDCO) is identified as one of the high impact project.
The project which was announced in 2012 to connect coal mines areas of Angul-Talcher-Chendipada is going on very slowly. Works on only 14 km of the total 80 km rail corridor are in progress. According to the Commerce and Transport department, the project has received stage-I forest clearance in December 2021 and compliance for stage-II clearance is in progress.
The other is possibly the 3rd and 4th rail line project from Salegaon to Budhapanka and Jarapada-Budhapanka project which is being reviewed from time to time by the PMO. This project is also not making desired progress.
The Ministry of Coal, in view of cleaner environment in coal transportation has given momentum in rail evacuation and also initiating new efforts to gradually move away from road movement of coal. Narendra Modi launched Gati Shakti - Nation Master Plan for Infrastructure development in October 2021 to bring different Ministries together and for integrated planning of infrastructure connectivity projects.