ECoR & ASRL Ink Pact In Bhubaneswar For Rail Line Operations-Maintenance

Bhubaneswar: East Coast Railway (ECoR) and Angul-Sukinda Railway Limited (ASRL) signed an agreement on Tuesday for operations and maintenance of 98.70 km broad gauge line between Budhapank and Baghuapal stations in Odisha.

ASRL Managing Director Dilip Kumar Samantaray and Chief Commercial Manager (Freight) H L Luang signed the memorandum in presence of ECoR General Manager Roop Narayan Sunkar in Bhubaneswar.

All Principal Heads of the departments of ECoR along with Additional General Manager Sharad Kumar Srivastava and officials from stake holders were present on the occasion.

ASRL, a SPV has been incorporated by Ministry of Railway through Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd (RVNL) for construction and maintenance of 98.70 KM broad gauge single railway Line between Budhapank station in Angul district and Baghuapal station near Sukinda in Jajpur district.

This new rail line will provide a direct link between iron ore rich areas of Odisha (Joda-Barbil) to steel and sponge iron industries in Angul region.  It also provides a shorter and congestion free alternative route between coal mining belt of Talcher to coal based thermal power plant in Kalinga Nagar industrial areas.

This new line will be in close proximity to the steel plants in Angul region, NALCO and a cluster of industries in Kalinga Nagar areas, ECoR said in a release.

The project line will also reduce the distance between Rourkela Steel Plant and Dhamara and Paradip ports. Dispatch of finished products of steel plants from Kalinga Nagar complex to destinations in Mumbai and Delhi via Talcher-Sambalpur-Jharsuguda will also be shorter and cheaper via the new alignment as compared with the route via Kharagpur.