A house committee of the state assembly led by speaker Pradeep Amat is scheduled to call on Railways minister Dinesh Trivedi to press for its demands for railway projects.
The committee has convened a meeting on Wednesday to hold discussions on the issue ahead of the meeting with the Railways minister.
“We will be meeting the Railways minister on Thursday and submitting a memorandum containing the state's demands,” said Amat.
In this pre-Rail Budget exercise, the state government is likely to highlight pending railway projects like Lanjigarh-Junagarh and Paradeep-Haridaspur besides pitch for more funds.
In the last Railway Budget, the ministry had allocated Rs 1,168 crore as against the state's demand of Rs 2,085 crore.
Recently, the state government had detailed its demands in a pre-Budget note meant to be submitted to the Railways minister.
With the additional rail borne traffic in Orissa projected in excess of 350 million tonne per annum in the next five years, the state government had sought allocation Rs 1,220 crore in the Rail Budget for 2012-13 for six broad gauge projects currently under execution.
These projects include Paradeep-Haridaspur (82 km), Khurda Road-Bolangir (289 km), Talcher-Bimlagarh (154 km), Angul-Duburi-Sukinda Road (90 km), Lanjigarh Road-Junagarh (56 km) and Jaleswar-Digha (41 km).
The state's rail traffic requirement is set to go up significantly as it has received proposals for adding over 80 mtpa of steel, eight mtpa of alumina, 15 mtpa capacity in petroleum refining, 30 mtpa in cement manufacturing and 47,000 MW of power generation.
