Rishikesh-Karanprayag rail project cost might touch Rs 15,000 crore

Ahead of the Railway Budget, Uttarakhand is expecting the Centre to allocate funds for the 125-km Rishikesh-Karanprayag rail project in the Garhwal region.

Senior railway officials said they were revising the cost. The project is expected to experience a heavy cost overrun. According to a rough estimate by railway officials, the new cost of the project is expected to reach Rs 15,000 crore. The initial cost of the project few years ago was said to be Rs 4,295.3 crore. Till now, the railways has only completed the survey.

The heavy cost is due to large number of tunnels which need to be built for the project, said senior officials of the Rail Vikas Nigam Limited.

Due to the heavy cost of the project, Chief Minister Harish Rawat has already pleaded his government's inability to share cost of the Rishikesh-Karanprayag and other rail projects in the state. "Being a special category state, Uttarakhand is unable to pay its share in implementation of railway projects. Projects of strategic importance could not be looked at from the economic point of view alone," Rawat has said, during a meeting with Union Railways Minister Suresh Prabhu at New Delhi on Monday.

Rawat requested Prabhu to include projects which would benefit Uttarakhand in the Railway Budget. The state government had already sent a detailed proposal in this regard, Rawat told Prabhu.

Rawat said owing to the high number of tourists visiting the state from the country and abroad, the rail connectivity was a necessity in the state.

"The way the railway ministry had set a record in establishing the Konkan Railways and Jammu Kashmir's Udhampur/ Katra railway line, similar attention has to be given to Uttarakhand also," Rawat said.

Rawat added the state government had forwarded a lot of proposals regarding railways to the Centre which must be attended to on priority basis. The state government was developing Gairsain as the summer capital of Uttarakhand. The Ramnagar-Chaukutiya rail route was approved in the Railway Budget. Gairsain was very close to Chaukutiya and thus a railway track between Ramnagar and Gairsain was feasible.