Bhubaneswar: Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Friday urged the Centre to sanction missing link projects in Mayurbhanj district.
In a letter to the Railway Minister Piyush Goyal, he said Mayurbhanj district is a national treasure in terms of flora, fauna and tourist potential. Besides, the district was a rich princely state prior to independence and always had a large rail network.
“However, the railways have not invested much to expand the pre-independence rail network except commissioning the gauge conversion work on the existing single line of 90 km between Rupsa and Bangiriposhi in 2006,” he added.
Drawing the attention of the Railway Minister, the Chief Minister said the Rupsa-Bangiriposhi line on the one end connects to the Howrah-Chennai trunk route at Rupsa but hits a dead-end at Bangiriposhi on the other side. With this arrangement, trains only ply from Rupsa side and come back to the same point with no connection to the Tatanagar side, which is on the Howrah-Mumbai trunk route.
The Chief Minister further said that the Railways had previously sanctioned a missing link of 50 km between Buramara (Odisha) to Chakulia (Jharkhand) to provide connectivity, but unfortunately now, they have proposed to drop the work from its sanctioned list on grounds of lack of financial viability. Similarly, another survey for the same connectivity has been completed for a 42-km line between Bangiriposhi and Gorumahisani. Even for this missing link, work is not being sanctioned by the Railways citing the low rate of return.
While requesting the Railway Minister to sanction the missing link project of Bangiriposhi-Gorumahisani in Mayurbhanj and Buramara-Chakulia in Odisha and Jharkhand to provide the much-needed connectivity, the Chief Minister assured that the state government will provide land free of cost for the Odisha portion of these projects in the greater interest of the people of Mayurbhanj.
