Title - : ‘Agitation for railway zone will be intensified’

The Visakhapatnam Railway Zone Sadhana Samiti will intensify the agitation for achieving the long-pending demand for setting up of a Railway Zone with Visakhapatnam as headquarters, said Samithi convenor J.V. Satyanarayana Murthy.“We will meet Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy in the near future to seek an appointment with the Prime Minister so that a State-level delegation of MPs, including those from Telangana, could meet the Prime Minister and reinforce the demand for setting up of the zone,” Mr. Satyanarayana told The Hindu when his attention was brought to the reported statement of Union Minister of State for Railways K.H. Muniyappa ruling out the possibility of merger of Waltair Division in South Central Railway.He welcomed the constitution of a committee by the Railway Board recently to go into the demands for formation of railway zones from various parts of the country. Recalling an earlier meeting with the Chief Minister on the issue, Mr. Satyanarayana said not only the Chief Minister, Pradesh Congress Committee chief Botcha Satyanarayana, Minister Dharmana Prasada Rao and a few Telangana MPs, who were there at that time, were convinced on the issue and had said the demand was ‘justified’. He said the samiti would apprise the newly-constituted committee on the need to set up a separate railway zone with Visakhapatnam as headquarters.