KOHIMA, MAY 11 : Despite the Centre taking keen interest to link the capitals of North East states by railway, the project is likely to take much longer than anticipated as the annual Railway Budget has earmarked only a small fraction of the total anticipated cost.
According to a Press Information Bureau (PIB) release, to provide connectivity to the capitals of Meghalaya, Manipur, Nagaland, Sikkim and Mizoram, five new line projects with an estimated total cost of Rs.21,862 crores were taken up, of which, the expenditure upto March 2016 is reported to be Rs.5887 crores and the outlay projected for 2016-17 is Rs.2400 crore. These projects are being funded through Railway Budget.
For Nagaland, the project aims to connect Dimapur-Kohima running 88 km stretch at a total anticipated cost of Rs.2973 crores. Rs.159 crores was already sanctioned for the said project up to March 2016 and the recent Railway Budget has earmarked Rs.350 crores as outlay for 2016-17.
According to the release, completion of projects will depend on many factors such as land acquisition, forestry and wild life clearances, shifting of services, construction of road over and road under bridges by road maintaining agencies, law and order situation etc. in addition to availability of funds. As many of these factors are not within the control of Railways, it was mentioned that it is not feasible to fix timelines for all the projects. However, Railways have reportedly taken various measures to expedite completion of projects including substantial increase in allocation of funds, prioritization of projects, delegation of powers at field level, inviting the state governments to participate with railways for resource mobilization for projects, nomination of nodal officers for improved co-ordination with the state governments etc.
The PIB release is based on information given by the Minister of State for Railways, Manoj Sinha in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha last Friday.
The projects are said to be taken up for the five states as rail connectivity already exists for capital cities of Assam (Guwahati), Tripura (Agartala) and Arunachal Pradesh (Itanagar).