Approval came after letter from Piyush Goyal (File)
New Delhi:
Gujarat, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Punjab accelerated the process of acquiring land for dedicated freight corridors, days after Minister of Railways Piyush Goyal wrote to nine ministers in chief, asking them to remove the obstacles of the project.
In his letter, Mr. Goyal told key ministers that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was closely monitoring the progress of the Rs 81,000 crore project.
In a recent meeting, the Prime Minister’s office questioned the delay of the project, its deadline being postponed from December 2021 to June 2022.
Over the past seven days, the railways have resolved land acquisition issues with these five states.
In the Punjab, the railways accepted the state government’s offer to allow it to borrow money from the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited (DFCCIL) for the construction of road bridges, while in some regions of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, he coordinated with local authorities to deploy police forces to deal with public order issues.
In the Punjab, long-outstanding land ownership issues for the road under bridges and the road over bridges at three locations have been resolved, railway officials said, while land issues for the construction of d ‘a high-voltage line in two places have been resolved.
In Bihar’s Rohtas district, three teams have been formed to speed up payment and physical possession of land, and police have been deployed on two roads over bridges that have been approved, officials said.
In Giridh district, Jharkhand, Rs 60 crore was disbursed for land, while in Dhanbad two blocked acres of land was received.
The project requires a maximum of land in Uttar Pradesh.
In Kanpur, he received the 80m-long land needed for an approach road to a road under a bridge, while the remaining 40m will be received by September 15, officials said.
A five-kilometer plot in Saharanpur district, blocked for more than 2.5 years due to public order issues, was also cleared and possession was taken by the railways on September 6, they said. said, adding that similar stranded plots in the state have also been cleared.
In Gujarat, too, three bridge routes at Bharuch and seven at Surat have been allocated.
To get the railroad freight project in order, Mr. Goyal has held several meetings with stakeholders and officials to accelerate progress and resolve critical DFC issues over the past 10 days.
