BHUBANESWAR: The Ministry of Railways has formally notified creation of Rayagada Railway Division under the East Coast Railway (ECoR) zone. The new division will be operationalised with effect from June 1.
ECoR will now have three divisions of Khurda Road, Sambalpur and Rayagada with its divisional headquarters at Rayagada town.
Waltair, which was earlier part of the ECoR, has been bifurcated into two parts. One part of it will be the new Rayagada division and remaining renamed as the Visakhapatnam division under the newly-formed South Coast Railway (SCoR) zone which was also notified at the same time.
The SCoR with be headquartered at Visakhapatnam. The zone carved out of the ECoR and South Central Railway zone will also be operational from next month.
The jurisdiction of Rayagada division will include the 164 km Koraput-Singapur Road section, 442 km Kottavalasa-Kirandul (KK) line section, 36 km Kuneru-Theruvali section and 54 km Gunupur-Paralakhemundi section. All these sections will be transferred from the existing Waltair division. The total jurisdiction of the Rayagada division will include 696 km.
The notification said the Palasa-Ichchapuram section having 53 km railway route, has been transferred from the Khurda Road division of the ECoR to the Visakhapatnam division.
Meanwhile, in a letter to general managers of all railway zones, director general of human resources, Ministry of Railways Aruna Nayar has instructed them to release employees for whom no objection certificate (NOC) has been granted and request for release has been sent by the SCoR and ECoR so that the new entities start operation smoothly.
So far, only 120 and 25 employees have joined SCoR headquarters at Visakhapatnam and Rayagada respectively.
The letter said the current status of granting NOC and release of employees for whom NOC has been granted to join the new zone and division falls well below the required levels. Zones have yet to decide on NOCs for more than 500 optees for SCoR and 350 for Rayagada division.
Nayar asked GMs to decide on the pending requests by May 8. For NOCs to be granted after May 8, the staff should be released before May 20 with instruction to report to the SCoR and Rayagada by May 26.
Meanwhile, the BJD has opposed the transfer of Palasa-Icchapuram section from ECoR to SCoR. Stating that the adjustment will result in economic loss to ECoR, BJD spokesperson Lenin Mohanty said that Keonjhar, Mayurbhanj, Balasore, Sundargarh and Jharsuguda sections from the SER should be merged with ECoR to compensate for the loss.
