Title - Agartala-Udaipur Railway Project Gets Delayed

The 44 km railway extension line from Agartala to Udaipur is unlikely to be completed by March 2013, a deadline which was announced by Northeastern Frontier Railway (NFR) after holding meeting with state government officials. The major cause of the delay, NFR sources said the problem in respect to the land acquisition in some patches of Bishalgarh subdivision in newly created Sipahijala district.

To review the work progress, General Manager of NFR (Construction) AK Verma inspected the different construction sites on November 21 last. After the inspection, the GM held meeting with senior NFR officials to review the progress. Sources said, the Agartala –Udaipur rail extension project will be completed in scheduled time- by March 2013 because of land acquisition problem at Bishalgarh subdivision. Local NFR officials told him the work got delayed by around one year due to land acquisition problem at Bishalgarh.

However, the GM asked the construction agencies to complete the railway construction work by end of next year. As per the plan, there will four stations in the 44 km railway extension line with two D Class category while another two C category. According to Transport department here, the plan for railway extension line up to Sabroom, state’s southern frontier subdivision will also be affected due to this delay. “Though people of Sabroom are supposed to witness railhead by 2014, the tardy pace of work in between Agartala and Udaipur will certainly affect another extension project- from Udaipur to Sabroom in spite of availability of fund.

The CPM, however, sees red in the problem centering land acquisition. The party alleged that due to obstruction by a skeleton section of people at Bishalgarh, land measuring 3 km could not be acquired leading to delay in executing the long cherished rail extension work. There are allegations former Chief Minister Samir Ranjan Barman has been politicizing the issue and trying to gain cheap political mileage by stalling the rail work.