The uncertainty surrounding the proposed world class station in Bhubaneswar has taken a new turn with a senior official of East Coast Railway (ECoR) voicing his opposition to the Railway Board's plan to upgrade the existing station in the city into a station of international standards.
Subrat Tripathy, chief commercial manager, ECoR, said, “In my opinion, it is not feasible to develop the existing station in Bhubaneswar into a world class station as suggested by the China Railway. It is better if the world class station is built at Barang on the outskirts of the city.”
“A team of the China Railway had indicated a model of multi-tier development of the existing railway station in the city and I don't think this is practicable. Also, it is not feasible for the Railways to acquire additional land in the vicinity of the existing station to implement the project”, he added.
Tripathy suggested that both the Orissa government and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) need to recommend to the Railway Board for building the world class station at Barang.
It may be noted that K C Jena, former chairman of the Railway Board, had ruled out the possibility of developing the proposed world class station at Barang on account of its locational disadvantage.
His view was corroborated by a delegation of China Railway which had suggested to upgrade the existing railway station in the city into a station of international standards.
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A high-level Chinese delegation led by W U Wei, director of Sino-India Railway Cooperation Working Group had visited Bhubaneswar in July 2008 to explore the feasibility of developing a world class station here.
The delegation had held discussions with A K Goyal, the then general manager of ECoR and had submitted its report to the Railway Board on the feasibility of the project. The cost of developing the world class station in the city was estimated at around Rs 4000 crore.
The station was to be built on the public private partnership (PPP) mode taking into account the growth in passenger traffic for the next 30 years and also plan for peripheral commercial activity accordingly.
However, the project has made negligible progress at the ground level in the last two years though the state chief minster and the railway Board had agreed on working out a joint mechanism to expedite it.
Indian Railways had identified 26 stations across the country including Bhubaneswar for upgrading them into world class stations in the first phase. In all, 50 stations were to be upgraded to this status.
These stations would have shopping centres, food stalls, restaurants, book shops, telephone and fax booths, medicine and variety stores and budget hotels as well as underground parking.
State-run IRCON International Limited and Rail Land Development Authority (RLDA) will develop these complexes.