Silchar, July 19: The Centre has agreed to accord fast track status to the ongoing 201-km Silchar-Lumding broad gauge project. This will ensure more funds for it than the Rs 70 crore proposed in this fiscal’s railway budget.
Union minister of state for heavy industries and public enterprises Santosh Mohan Dev said here last night that both finance minister P. Chidambaram and railway minister Laloo Prasad Yadav had said funds would not be a constraint for the gauge conversion scheme.
Dev, a member of Parliament from Silchar seat from where the broad gauge line will start, said the leaders had assured him that they would renew efforts to complete the project in this backward south Assam zone, deficient in infrastructure facilities. The project envisages conversion of the 214-km-long Silchar-Lumding metre gauge line into a broad gauge one.
The project, whose foundation stone was laid by former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda in January 1992, has been dragging along at a snail’s pace. After years of dilly-dallying, when the Railways gave the scheme the go-ahead in 1996, it was envisaged that it would be completed in six years at the cost of Rs 648 crore. However, because of further delay, the outlay now stands at Rs 1,491.69 crore.
According to a confidential document of the Northeast Frontier Railway (construction), Rs 269 crore has been spent on the project so far.
P.K. Deshmukh, deputy chief engineer of the NF Railways (construction), said at present earthwork is being done on the 30-km Silchar-Badarpur, 20-km Badarpur-Chandranathpur, 22-km Chandranathpur-Ditakcherra and 39-km Ditakcherra-Lower Haflong routes.
Deshmukh identified several impediments obstructing work like inhospitable topography, inaccessible terrain, a limited working session of five months because of heavy rains, transport bottlenecks, insurgency problem and the lackadaisical attitude of Cachar administration in making available land for laying the broad gauge track.
According to an Notheast Frontier Railway document, the broad gauge section envisages construction of 31 stations between Silchar and Lumding, 56 major and 130 minor bridges and 20 tunnels as against 37 tunnels in the metre gauge section at present.
When the conversion work is completed, trains in this section will gather a speed of 75 km per hour as against 30 km per hour at present.
