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Pending railway projects to be completed soon

By Our Staff Reporter

KOLLAM Dec. 30. The Union Minister for Railways, Nitish Kumar, has said that all pending projects of the Railways are being targeted to be completed within the next eight to 10 years.

He was laying the foundation stone for a road overbridge at the SP Office junction level-crossing here today.

Mr. Nitish Kumar said that there are 233 projects on hand with the Railways and commissioning of the same would require Rs. 44,000 crores. However, the budgetary support for the same stands only at Rs. 2,200 crores. Hence if the budgetary allocation is solely depended upon, it would take a long time to commission these projects.

Hence the Railways would target early commissioning of the projects through the non-budgetary Rashtriya Rail Vikas Yojana scheme announced by the Prime Minister. He said that under the scheme, projects with an investment of Rs. 8,000 crores would be undertaken to strengthen and augment the high-density routes. When completed, the project would make it feasible for even goods trains to ply at 100 km per hour on the high-density routes.

Gauge conversion

Responding to a point made by the Adoor MP, Kodikunnil Suresh, the Minister said that if the required land is made available, the gauge conversion on the metre gauge sector from Kollam to Punalur would be completed during 2004-05. While 17 hectares of land is required for the same, nothing has been made available so far. It is the responsibility of the State Government to make available the land for the same. He said that once the Kollam-Punalur gauge conversion is completed, the upward section from Punalur would be taken up. He termed as totally baseless the allegation from Mr. Kodikunnil that there was discrimination on the part of the Railways vis-a-vis the gauge conversion programme. In his presidential address at the inaugural function, the Labour Minister, Babu Divakaran, called upon the Railway Minister to consider a second terminal at Kollam from where an alternate line could be linked to the Kollam-Thiruvananthapuram line at Eravipuram without entering the city area. He made the point while stating that the existing line taking a sharp U-turn through the city had de facto fenced the city into two. Mr. Nitish Kumar in his address announced the Railways would conduct a survey on the same.

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