Uttarakhand PHD Chamber to discuss rail projects with Prabhu

Last month, CM Harish Rawat also had held telephonic talks with Prabhu on rail projects in the state

After Chief Minister Harish Rawat, it is now the turn of PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry to call for speeding up and strengthening of rail projects in Uttarakhand.

The state unit of the Chamber would hold a meeting with Union Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu and other senior railway officials at New Delhi on Friday on rail projects in the state.

A delegation of the Chamber headed by its state Co-Chairman Rajiv Ghai and Secretary Anil Taneja will participate in the meeting.

"Be it rail over bridges or new rail lines, we will ask the railway minister to speed up the pending projects in Uttarakhand," said Taneja.

Last month, Rawat had held telephonic talks with Prabhu and called for speeding up pending rail projects in the state. The chief minister had also asked Prabhu to give relaxation in certain rail parameters and standards to push the railway projects in Himalayan states particularly in Uttarakhand, keeping in view their strategic locations for sharing vast borders with China.

Since China has developed big infrastructure along its border with Uttarakhand, top priorities should also be given to the state as far as the development of railway projects were concerned, the chief minister said.

The state government has sent a request to the northern railway for running intercity express trains between Lucknow-Bareilly-Kathgodam, New Delhi-Kathgodam and Kathgodam-Dehradun. The government has also requested the railways to conduct the survey of Bageshwar-Tanakpur railway line, senior government officials said.

The state government is also expecting the Railway Vikas Nigam Limited, which is implementing the 125.09-km Rishikesh-Karnaprayag project, to speed it up. The foundation stone for this rail project in the Garhwal region, at a preliminary cost of about Rs 4295 crore, was laid three months before the 2012 Assembly elections in the state. The project was one of the key poll planks of the ruling Congress at that time.