NEW DELHI: The Indian Railways has decided to link those district headquarter towns in the country that were still not on rail map. The Railways will conduct a study to include them in the rail map to connect them to the rest of India. Earlier, the Niti Aayog had also suggested that the Indian Railways should prepare a plan on the line of Pradhan Mantri Gramin Sadak Yojna and the National Highway Development Programme (NHDP) to link districts which are still not on rail map.
Union Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw sharing this at a program in Bhubneshwar on Thursday said that the railways is working on the project to identify the district headquarters towns which are still not on rail map in the country. The railways has also prepared a satellite map to identify such district headquarters towns.
Through the satellite mapping, the Railways is learnt to have identified 132 district headquarter towns that need to be on the rail map. Sources in the Railways Ministry hinted that most of such district headquarter towns that have been identified are from Northeast and South Indian region besides other parts of country. “A Detail Project Report (DPR) is being prepared by the Railways for bringing the identified 132 district headquarters towns on rail map,” a source said.
Citing some example, a railways source said: “There are many district headquarters in towns like Idukki and Wayanad in Kerala, Dhar, Khargone and Barwani in tribal dominated Madhya Pradesh districts, which are still not on rail map.”
Wayanad is the parliamentary constituency of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and the closet railways station to this district headquarter is Kozhikode which is about 110 km away. Similarly, Madikeri, the district headquarters of Karnataka’s Kodagu district, is still not on rail map like many other district headquarter towns in the country. Its nearest railways station is Mysore that is about 95 km away and Kannur in Kerala that is about 79 km away.
“With the successful execution of this work plan, the number of railways stations will certainly increase from 7,349 to more than 7400 in the country the number of passengers travelling daily will also get a boost giving a rise in revenue from passenger services to the national transporters,” said a source in the Ministry.