Notice to Railway Board chairman on contempt plea

The Delhi High Court Wednesday issued show cause notice to the Railway Board chairman on a plea seeking contempt proceedings against him for not complying with court's order on setting up a panel to review the 125-km-long Katra-Banihal section of the rail link to Kashmir.

Justice V.K. Shali sought response from Railway Board chairman Arunendra Kumaron the plea filed by Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL), through advocate Prashant Bhushan saying that committee was not set up by the railways within the time (four weeks) given by the court.

Bhushan argued that Kumar ignored the court's order and it was a serious violation.

In May, a division bench of the high court had ordered the railway board to conduct a review of the alignment by setting up a committee of experts. The Qazigund-Katra leg of Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla rail link project was announced by the then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

There was supposed to be a railway line between Katra and Banihal, a part of the Kashmir link project flagged off by Vajpayee in 2002 with a five-year deadline for completion.

On the 125-km-long stretch from Katra to Banihal, the construction ran into serious engineering problems. By 2007, hardly 10 percent of the work could be done while several tunnels collapsed during construction and work on none of the major bridges could even be started.