The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) has effectively rejected the railways' demand for financial support from the exchequer for funding non-viable projects, particularly the new line projects.
" We will be forced to go in for reappropriation of budgeted funds. We may have to take away some funds from projects where the implementation is slow and provide for the new projects that have been cleared. But the impact will not be severe this year as we will now undertake final location surveys for the projects which have been cleared and take them up for construction next year", a Rail Bhavan source said.
The CCEA has approved a series of projects which the railways wanted to either freeze or scrap altogether. Besides upsetting the new agenda of focussing only on revenue-earning investments, the CCEA has given the green signal to projects for which no provision has been made in the 1998-99 railway budget.
This includes the new line project linking Diphu with Karong to provide rail connectivity in Manipur at a cost of Rs 1604.08 crores. There is no provision in the railway budget for this 123.84 km long broadgauge line .
In its white paper released a day before the railway budget was placed in parliament, the railway ministry said it was beyond its means to fund new infrastructure in backward areas which provided negative returns on investment.
And yet, the very argument of backwardness of certain regions was shown as the reason for the CCEA clearing projects in Madhya Pradesh and the north-east.
It has approved a proposal for lying a new 541 km line in the backwarde Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh which are poorly served by the railways. This project connecting Lalitpur with Satna, Rewa-Sidhi-Singrauli and Mahoba-Khajuraho will cost Rs 974.98 crores.
Railway minister Nitish Kumar had to face flak in Bihar because he had not announced any major projects in his home state, unlike the former railway minister Ram Vilas Paswan who had announced a series of new projects for Bihar.
The CCEA decision shows that he has used the opportunity to overcome the critisism he faced in the political scenario in Bihar.
Three railway projects costing Rs 835 crores have been cleared in Bihar, although Rail Bhavan sources said they did not have the faintest idea on how to augment the necessary resources either this year or the subsequent years.
They include a new line connecting Ranchi to Koderma via Hazaribagh and Barkakhana has also been approved. The Rs 491.20 crore project will result in a new route of 189 km in length. Another 104 km link between Koderma and Giridih in Bihar costing Rs 137.53 crores also got the green signal.
Another project is the gauge conversion of the Jaynagar-Darbhanga-Narkatiaganj line which will improve rail infrastructure in backward region in North Bihar. The conversion cost of the 256 km line is Rs 208.16 crores.
