Posts filed under ‘Rail connectivity’
New daily passenger train between Sambalpur and Bhawanipatna
Following is a screenshot from a DNA report:
Odisha to bear 50 percent cost of Khurda Balangir rail project
Following is a report from the post.jagran.com:
Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik gave his approval to such a proposal, the sources said, adding Odisha was the first state in the country to provide free of cost land for any railway project and offer to bear 50 percent of cost of the construction of the railway line.
The state government’s action in this regard came due to tardy progress of the 289 km Khurda-Bolangir railway line.
Though the project was sanctioned way back in 1994-95, only 52 km rail line construction work was expected to be completed by end of 2013-14 fiscal, they said.
“As the Khurda-Bolangir railway project is considered significant for the socio-economic development of the people of at least four districts (Bolangir, Boudh, Nayagarh and Sonepur), the state government was ready to contribute to the project,” the sources said.
Though Khurda-Bolangir project is considered as the biggest railway project in the state, only Rs 40 crore was allotted for the project in the last railway budget.
The first survey work for the line was conducted in 1945 by the then Bengal-Nagpur Railway (BNR) as it was felt that there should be railway link for the tribal dominated districts of Bolangir, Kalahandi, Koraput and Phulbani.
However, after Independence the project remained in cold storage till the Planning Commission approved it in 1993 and it received the presidential nod in 1994. Its cost was then estimated at Rs 383 crore. The project was expected to be completed within five years but funds crunch became a hindrance.
A number of delegations had met subsequent Railway Ministers, without any progress. Therefore, the state government decided to take half of the responsibility for completion of the project.
(Agencies)
Rail corridor in Jharsuguda district for evacuation of coal
Following is a report from the BS:
India is set to commission the first of its three ambitious inter-state rail corridor projects dedicated to coal evacuation in the Naxal-affected Jharsuguda district in Odisha in a little over a year. The project is part of a bigger, though much-delayed plan to invest Rs 7,000 crore in the three rail lines to free 300 million tonnes (mt) of coal supply, locked due to logistical constraints across three states.
The Cabinet Committee on Investment (CCI) has instructed the coal and the rail ministries to work with the Naveen Patnaik-led government to commission the Ib Valley corridor in Odisha first by December 2014, a senior official close to the development told Business Standard. “Both, land and forest clearances are underway for the Jharsuguda-Barpalli line. A special team under the Project Monitoring Group of the CCI is monitoring the lines now,” he said.
The 53-km corridor will help state-owned miner Coal India Ltd (CIL) scale production potential by an additional 132 mt a year. Only 15 per cent of this is utilised in the absence of evacuation facility. The total cost of setting up the three projects has escalated from Rs 2,000 crore when they were initially planned before the beginning of the Eleventh Plan period in 2007 to Rs 7,000 crore now.
The official also added the next of the three corridors to become a reality would be the 93-km Tori-Shivpur-Kathautia line connecting North Karanpura coalfield in Jharkhand, another Naxal-affected state. All the necessary clearances for the project are already in place now, after a series of meetings taken by the Railway Board Chairman with the state chief secretaries and the central ministries. The rail line is being set up at an estimated cost of Rs 1,095 crore and would help move 127 mt of coal annually out of the coalfields.
The third project, the longest of the three, would be a 180-kilometre stretch connecting the eastern and the western regions of the Mand-Raigarh coalfield in Chhattisgarh. The Bhupdeopur-Korba-Dharamjai corridor would free up production potential of 40 MT per annum for CIL. The miner would contribute Rs 2,880 crore of the overall project cost of Rs 4,500 crore while the rest would come from Indian railway arm IRCON and the state government.
Bhawanipatna railway station inaugurated
Bhawanipatna (Odisha), Aug 11 (PTI) The railway station at Bhawanipatna in Sambalpur division of East Coast Railways was inaugurated and 18438 Bhawanipatna-Rayagada- Bhubaneswar Link Express train was flagged off from here today. The daily express train, flagged off by Lok Sabha member and former minister of state for Railways Bhakta Charan Das, will link Raygada, Vijayanagaram and Berhampur to reach Bhubaneswar. He requested railway officials to take steps for early completion of Lanjigarh-Junagarh rail line from Bhawanipatna to Junagarh. Implementation of rail wagon factory project would also give Kalahandi a special place in rail map, Das said. PTI COR SKN AMD
Odisha govt. offers land to set up a wagon factory in Kalahandi
Odisha government today offered to provide land for establishment of a railway wagon factory in tribal dominated Kalahandi district, official sources said. Indian Railway, which had already sanctioned Rs 1 crore for establishment of the first wagon factory at Sitalapalli in Ganjam district during 2012-13 fiscal, had also indicated that it would not hesitate to construct another such project if the state government provides land.
“Responding to the Indian Railways, the state government had already identified land to set up the second wagon factory in Kalahandi district,” the official said. A railway wagon factory in the undeveloped and tribal dominated district like Kalahandi, would certainly help boost the economic condition of the local people. The state government would provide all assistance for establishment of the wagon factory in Kalahandi, chief minister Naveen Patnaik said.
Kosal Discussion and Development Forum 