Shibu Soren at Birsa Munda Airport in Ranchi on Monday. Picture by Prashant Mitra

Ranchi, Feb. 8: Chief minister Shibu Soren wants the Centre to share half the cost of completing pending railway projects in the state and is making every effort to convince railway minister Mamata Banerjee to announce the same in her budget speech.

Pushing the state’s case is Congress Rajya Sabha member from Jharkhand, Mabel Rebello. “The railway minister has promised to share the burden at a 1:1 ratio instead of the existing 2:1,” Rebello told The Telegraph.

The chief minister’s principal secretary, Sukhdev Singh, said Soren’s letter in this regard would be sent to Banerjee once the chief minister returned from Calcutta after attending tomorrow’s meeting.

In the letter, the chief minister is understood to have justified Jharkhand’s request by stating that the state happened to be the highest contributor to the railway’s freight revenue, almost 50 per cent. “Moreover, Jharkhand is a poor state. So, it is not feasible for the state to contribute two thirds of the total cost,” he said.

At the state finance minister’s meet in New Delhi on January 13, deputy chief minister Raghubar Das, who holds the finance portfolio, had requested the Centre to compensate the expenditure being incurred by the state on these railway projects.

It all started in 2002, when the Babulal Marandi government signed an MoU with the railway ministry which provided that the state would share two-thirds of the final completion cost of six new railway projects, with the balance being borne by the ministry of railways.

Marandi fulfilled the promise and immediately released the required Rs 421 crore, but subsequent chief ministers refused to toe the line.

In 2005, former chief minister Arjun Munda asked the Centre to review the MoU, keeping in mind the backwardness of the state.

The six projects envisaged an investment of Rs 2,000 crore and were supposed to be completed by 2007. The project cost has now escalated to Rs 3,292 crore.

In the 2009-10 budget, the state government had provided a mere Rs 5 crore for the projects. An additional Rs 68 crore was provided in the supplementary budget, approved by Parliament, under President’s rule. But even that proved woefully inadequate.

“We require at least Rs 200 crore more in the current fiscal to run the show,” said a senior government official.

According to railway sources, the target of completing the Koderma-Hazaribagh-Ranchi rail link now was 2012, but that would only be possible if the state government contributed its share regularly. “The Koderma-Ranchi line happens to be a priority for the railways. We have got all mandatory forest clearances and cleared land acquisition too. All we need is funds,” said a railway official associated with the project.

He added the railway ministry had provided Rs 128 crore this fiscal, while the state government had given Rs 5 crore. “In fact, we have been without funds since August. It was in January that the railway released Rs 60 crore,” the official said.

According to him, the railways were yet to get forest clearance for the Koderma-Tilaiya (Nawada) project. However, a 20km stretch out of a proposed 34km link between Koderma and Giridih would be opened for passengers in March. The Dumka-Deoghar line is also far from complete. Around 818 hectares were acquired for the proposed 67.25km stretch that cuts through 91 villages.