CUTTACK: The Orissa High Court has decided to monitor the progress of land acquisition for the 150 km Talcher-Bimalagarh new rail link project which has been hanging fire for the past 19 years.The court took the decision on Thursday after taking note of an affidavit filed by the railways in reply to a PIL filed by Sachetana Nagarika Manch for expediting the key railway infrastructure project sanctioned by the union government in 2003.
Making submissions on the Manch’s behalf, advocate Sisir Das submitted that the project had made little progress owing to slow pace of land acquisition, especially in Deogarh district where no private land has been acquired so far.
The total 150 km length of the project runs through three districts - Angul (79 km), Deogarh (32 km) and Sundargarh (39 km). In the affidavit filed by the railways, it was stated that 2153.53 acre of private land is required for the project in the three districts. While private land to the extent of 188.12 acre is required to be acquired in 19 villages of Deogarh, another 247.64 acre of private land is targeted for acquisition in 29 villages of Sundargarh.
The division bench of Chief Justice S Muralidhar and Justice MS Raman observed in the affidavit that in both Deogarh and Sundargarh some progress was made in diversion of government and forest land but absolutely no progress was made as far as actual acquisition of private land.
The bench directed the state to file a supplementary affidavit to update the status of land acquisition for the project in Deogarh and Sundargarh by July 3 and posted the matter to August 1 for further consideration. In its order the bench said: “Even as regards government land, forest land and department land it is seen from the affidavit not the entire land required for the purpose of the project has been handled over to the railways. The timeline for doing this will also be indicated in the supplementary affidavit.”