JAJPUR: Hundreds of people on Tuesday staged rail roko at Jajpur Keonjhar Road railway station protesting lack of allocation for the proposed Jajpur Road-Dhamra new railway line project in the Union Budget.The agitators under the banner of Jajpur Road-Dhamra Railpath Sangram Samiti squatted on the tracks demanding sanction of the new rail line.
Samiti member Mayadhar Nayak said the railways had announced for survey of the Jajpur Road-Dhamra new line in 2012-13. The East Coast Railways (ECoR) had roped in an organisation for a survey of the project in 2014. Later, ECoR submitted the survey report to the Railway Board in April 2015. “After Rajya Sabha Member from Odisha Ashwini Vaishnaw became the Railway Minister, we hoped that he would make budgetary provision for the project. However, there was no mention about the project in the Union Budget,” he said.
The proposed line will connect tourism spots of Jajpur, Kendrapara and Bhadrak districts and is economically viable because of the mining and industrial belt in Jajpur, Nayak added.Former Finance minister Prafulla Chandra Ghadei said, “It is a legitimate demand of both Jajpur and Bhadrak districts. But nothing has materialised yet.”