House panel on railway to submit memorandum to PM

A house committee of the state assembly led by speaker Pradeep Amat has decided to call on the Prime Minister and Railways Minister in mid-November to present a memorandum on the state's demands of funds for railway projects.

This was decided at an important meeting of the committee held on Thursday. The details of fund assistance and rail projects, however, are yet to be worked out.

“The committee will focus on getting more rail projects for areas that are set to witness high industrialisation and also places with tourism potential. The focus of the memorandum to be compiled will also be on extending rail connectivity to uncovered and backward regions of the state,” said Amar Prasad Satpathy, senior NCP leader who is also one of the members of the committee.

 

Lack of coordination between the officials of East Coast Railway (ECoR) and Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd (RVNL) surfaced at the meeting.

“The ECoR general manager was not present at the meeting. Besides, the officials of the zonal railway who attended the meeting had come unprepared. There is a clear lack of coordination between the officials of ECoR and RVNL,” said senior BJP leader K V Singhdeo, also a member of the committee.

Recently, the state government had detailed its demands in a pre-Budget note meant to be submitted to the Railways minister Dinesh Trivedi.

With the additional rail borne traffic in Orissa projected in excess of 350 million tonne per annum in the next five years, the state government had sought allocation Rs 1,220 crore in the Rail Budget for 2012-13 for six broad gauge projects currently under execution.

These projects include Paradeep-Haridaspur (82 km), Khurda Road-Bolangir (289 km), Talcher-Bimlagarh (154 km), Angul-Duburi-Sukinda Road (90 km), Lanjigarh Road-Junagarh (56 km) and Jaleswar-Digha (41 km). The state's rail traffic requirement is set to go up significantly as it has received proposals for adding over 80 mtpa of steel, eight mtpa of alumina, 15 mtpa capacity in petroleum refining, 30 mtpa in cement manufacturing and 47,000 MW of power generation.