New Delhi, Feb. 7: Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi today suggested that the Northeast Frontier Railway should look exclusively after the region while pushing for a few other pre-budget agenda during meetings with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
The state that scored the lowest in the human development indices figures, calculated by the Planning Commission and released recently by the DoNER minister, is impatient with the numerous projects which are still stuck.
Gogoi urged the Prime Minister, for instance, to have the Bogibeel and gas cracker projects expedited.
He also prodded the Prime Minister over the establishment of the North East Water Resources Authority, which will look into the vexed dam issue and other pressing problems.
“With Arunachal Pradesh opposing NEWRA, how long can we wait? That is why I requested the Prime Minister to initiate measures to make the Brahmaputra Board vibrant and resilient so that it can take up effective measures to control floods, especially erosion, which has eaten away nearly 4 lakh hectares of land, rendering thousands of people homeless,” the chief minister said.
The Prime Minister is understood to have assured him that the matter would be taken up with the ministry of water resources.
Maoist inroads into the Northeast figured in the meeting, with Gogoi also raising the issue of rehabilitation of the 6,000-odd surrendered militants in Assam.
“I requested the Prime Minister for funds to rehabilitate them by providing skill development training so that they are gainfully and meaningfully employed. He agreed with what I proposed and assured me to take up the matter with the Planning Commission,” the chief minister said.
In his conversation with Sonia Gandhi, Gogoi spoke about the steps taken up by the state to reduce the infant mortality rate and the maternal mortality rate.
With that hint of positive development, Gogoi went on to say that while the Congress will do well in the panchayat polls, the party may not be able to erase a marginal anti-incumbency factor completely.
For a party that views the Northeast as its pet constituency — the Congress rules five of the eight states — and anxious with polls elsewhere, this indeed is not encouraging news.
But it was connectivity that figured prominently in Gogoi’s agenda.
Arguing that good connectivity was critical for the people of the state and the other states of the region, he urged railway minister Dinesh Trivedi to declare the Northeast Frontier Railway as a dedicated railway zone exclusively for the region.
He requested introduction of a new super-fast express train connecting Jorhat-Sivasagar-Moran-Dibrugarh as a link between Dangri and Furkating.
The chief minister also wants Trivedi to double the railway track from New Bongaigaon to Kamakhya via Guwahati, New Bongaigaon to Kamakhya via Rangia and Guwahati to Tinsukia via Lumding as well as give directions for electrification between Katihar and Guwahati.
He asked for new railway lines connecting Salona to Kumtai and Jorhat to Sivasagar.
Gogoi also urged Trivedi for a new railway line linking Tirap to Lekhapani at a distance of only 6km, as it would help transportation of coal to Bongaigaon thermal power station.
Steps to set up the wagon manufacturing facility at Amingaon announced in the railway budget 2010, besides upgrade and modernisation of coach workshops at Bongaigaon and Dibrugarh, were also touched upon.
Other proposals taken up by the chief minister include modernisation and improvement of railway stations at Guwahati, Tinsukia, Jorhat and Bongaigaon, railway level crossing at important unmanned locations across the state and setting up of an integrated freight complex at Changsari.
