Land acquisition slows rly projects

Although armed with the ‘public purpose’ tag, Indian Railways is struggling to get land to implement projects. The construction of at least 181 km of new lines had been delayed during the Tenth Five-Year Plan period (2002-03 to 2006-07) due to land acquisition problems alone.

Railway Board Chairman K C Jena has singled out land acquisition as the biggest problem haunting its development plans. “Land acquisition is a very serious problem. We have not been able to complete many of the projects because of this,” he said at a meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Railways headed by CPI(M)’s Basudeb Acharia.

Apart from this, defaults by contractors has emerged as another major problem causing delay of the projects.

During the Tenth Plan, the railways had set a target of laying 1,310 km of new lines, but could achieve only 920 km. Similarly, they had a target of doubling 1,575 km of railway lines but could do so only for 1,300 km. In other areas such as gauge conversion, track renewals and electrification, which do not involve new land, the railways have surpassed their targets during the last Plan period.

Not only the unavailability of land, but also its spiralling prices have been delaying railway projects. SK Vij, member-engineer of the board, gave Acharia’s committee the example of the Rohtak-Rewari line in Haryana: “The original land value was said to be Rs 23 crore; the state government said it would share the cost of the project, which was less than Rs 300 crore. But the land value has increased to Rs 130 crore. So, that calls for revision of estimates. This means my people have to sit down with revenue authorities because that makes projects unviable, at times.”

Railway officials also find it difficult to locate land for compulsory afforestation programmes. When the railway board officials met the Standing Committee to review the railways’ performance during the Tenth Plan period, Vij said: “Land has to be found for compulsory afforestation also because the railways do not have land for that purpose and cannot afford it. Land has to be found by state governments.”