Bhubaneswar, March 22: The House Committee on Railways of the Odisha Assembly will meet railway minister Suresh Prabhu and urge him to reconsider the decision to shift the rail wagon repair factory from Narla in Kalahandi district to Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh.

This was announced by Odisha Assembly speaker Niranjan Pujari, who heads the panel, after the Assembly passed an unanimous resolution demanding a rollback of the railway's decision. The resolution was adopted following a special discussion in the House that lasted for more than two hours.

The issue has been rocking the Assembly since the information obtained by RTI activist Hemanta Panda about the railway board's decision to shift the wagon factory to Andhra Pradesh came to the fore. The RTI information had said that the project had been shifted due to lack of adequate water and other infrastructure. The Congress has been stalling the proceedings of the Assembly for the past two days demanding a discussion in the issue.

Odisha's commerce and transport minister Ramesh Chandra Majhi said the then railway minister Pawan Kumar Bansal had announced the establishment of the wagon factory at Narla in Kalahandi district while presenting the rail budget in Parliament on February 26, 2013. However, no funds were provided in that budget for the purpose.

On October 30, 2013, the East Coast Railway had sought to know from the state government whether it would be able to supply 2 lakh gallons of water every day free of cost or at a subsidised rate. The state government had decided to entirely waive water tax in the state's interest and had informed it to East Coast Railway on December 23 the same year, said Majhi.

Besides, the state government has identified two patches of land near Narla Road railway station for setting up the wagon factory, one at Chapatkhanda village and the other at Bhatang village, he said.

However, the railway ministry has sanctioned a wagon factory at Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh in the 2015-16 railway budget, without consulting the Odisha government, said the state transport minister.

The state government has reiterated its demand before the railway minister for the establishment of the railway wagon factory in Kalahandi district. Chief minister Naveen Patnaik wrote to the railway minister to this effect on December 2, 2015. "However, the railway ministry has not announced any new wagon factory in Odisha in the 2016-17 railway budget," he said.

The minister was speaking while replying to a special debate on the issue. The debate was taken up following an official motion moved by BJD

chief whip Ananta Das after the government was forced by the Opposition parties to bring in the motion. While the BJD dubbed the move as "anti-Odisha", the Congress targeted both the BJD government in the state and BJP-led NDA government at the Centre. BJP, on the other hand, blamed the state government for not providing the required infrastructure for the project.