Dhanbad, May 11: After holding railways to ransom for an entire day on April 27, Piparwar Vikas Manch (PVM) has now threatened to again stop traffic in the Central India Coalfield (CIC) section on May 27, all because their demand for an overbridge at the Ray station is yet to be met.
The manch had put up a blockade last month and detained several long-distance trains for over 22 hours and had brought dispatch of coal to a standstill. The agitation had caused a loss of Rs 5 crore to the railways.
Ray station is the loading hub for coal mined at Piparwar and the railways earn Rs 10 crore daily as freight at this station, netting Rs 3,500 crore annually. As far as commercial earning is concerned, it stands next only to Mumbai in the entire railway network. But earnings from passenger fare is just Rs 5,000 a day.
Railway officials here give a different spin to the story and explain that there are three reasons for the seemingly simple and innocuous demand of an overbridge not being met. First and foremost, they say, is that the Jharkhand government has not made any move so far to get the overbridge constructed.
Overbridges, the officials say, are jointly executed by the Railways and the state government concerned. Since in this case the state government has not bothered to take it up, there is no provision for it in the railway budget.
The second reason is that any construction work at Ray siding would adversely affect loading of coal, they added and declared that finally, the inconvenience caused to the people by the absence of an overbridge is being vastly exaggerated. It is not a vital link for people residing on both sides of the overbridge, they said. The real reason, the Railway officials claim, lies in the inability of the railways to lay the 13-km railway track between Mcluskieganj and Piparwar, which was sanctioned way back in 1994. The task was first entrusted to IRCON and thereafter to RITES but both the organisations have failed to lay the tracks in the last eleven years.
Every time they tried to get the work started, they apparently came up with resistance from the coal mafia and vested-interest groups. Last month too, they claimed, the agitation at Ray was stage-managed and financed by the vested interests because of renewed attempts to start the work on laying the track.
Coal mined at Piparwar is currently transported by road to the Ray siding, around 4 kms away. A railway track connecting the two points would put coal transporters out of business. Since dumpers make as many as 5,000 daily trips to cover the distance, the financial stakes are high enough for transporters to resist plans for a railway-track.
What?s more, the thriving business of pilferage and smuggling of coal from the Ray siding would also come to a close if the railway line comes up, the officials said, because rakes would then be loaded directly at the production point. The involvement of the transporters in the stage-managed agitation on April 27 was established when the next day, the Railway Protection Force of Patratu booked a dumper owner for unloading coal on the tracks in a bid to obstruct train traffic.
Railway officials said the memorandum submitted by the PVM cites the instance of three women run over at Ray in 2003 to justify their agitation.
Sixteen persons were booked under various provisions of the Railway Act and were arrested subsequently. Senior superintendent of police in Ranchi, Anurag Gupta, had suspended four police officials, including the officer in charge of Patratu police station K.N. Prasad, for not taking action against people causing the rail blockade.
The movement had gained momentum after Kanke MLA Ram Chandra Baitha and MLA from Mandar, Bandhu Tirkey, joined the people?s movement.
