Assembly Committee to meet Prabhu over Narla wagon repair unit

Ending the two-day long deadlock in Odisha Assembly over shifting of the rail wagon repair factory from Narla in Kalahandi district, the House today resolved to lodge a protest with the Railway Ministry and demand re-establishment of the proposed project.
The decision was announced by Speaker Niranjan Pujari after a two-and-half-an-hour special debate on the issue.
All MLAs cutting across party lines resolved that the House committee will meet Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu and hand him over a memorandum requesting not to shift the proposed rail wagon repair factory from Narla in backward Kalahandi district to Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh.

The House witnessed pandemonium for two days with Opposition members demanding a special debate on the issue. Though the speaker initially did not allot time for the discussion, he had finally accepted the opposition Congress and BJP demand and fixed a time for the debate.
No business could be transacted in the House since yesterday till the special discussion was held this afternoon.
Participating in the special debate, Leader of Opposition Narasingha Mishra of Congress wondered how the state government could not know about the proposed shifting of the Railway project.

"I smell politics for ignoring the project which was to be set up in Kalahandi," Mishra said adding that he would suggest a visit of the Assembly Committee to meet the Railway Minister in Delhi.

Senior BJP leader K V Singhdeo wondered how the ruling BJD could not know about the Railway ministry's decision of shifting the project to Andhra Pradesh when one of its MPs is a member of the Railway Standing Committee.
This apart, there was no allocation in the Pink Book for the project which was announced in 2013-14, he said.
"Rather than finding fault in each other, I will suggest that let the Assembly Committee headed by the Speaker visit Delhi and try to bring back the project to the state," Singhdeo said.
Government Chief Whip Ananta Das said it was

unfortunate that the project has been shifted from a backward area to a developed region of Andhra Pradesh.
"There is a similar project in Andhra Pradesh, but no such railway project in Odisha," he said adding that members of all the parties have agreed to demand re-establishment of the project in Kalahandi.
Replying to the debate, Odisha Commerce and Transport Minister Ramesh Majhi said the Railway ministry had announced a new new rail wagon repair factory in Visakhapatanam in 2015-16 budget without consulting Odisha government.
"The Odisha government had provided all the logistic support including land, water and others for setting up the rail wagon repair factory at Narla. But, the Railway ministry did not make any allocation for the project," he said adding that the water resources department had allowed free of cost water for the proposed factory at Narla.

The required land for the project has been kept ready and the state government has demanded the revival of the Narla wagon repair factory project.
The speaker said steps would be taken to prepare a memorandum to be submitted to the Railways minister on the proposed rail wagon repair factory at Narla keeping in view the opinion of the house members.
Earlier in the morning, the house witnessed uproarious scenes over the issue which led the speaker to adjourn proceedings thrice before allowing a special debate during the post lunch session.