From Our Correspondent
AGARTALA: The impasse over land acquisition has emerged a major bottleneck in laying rail track in between Agartala and Udaipur with the state government failing to convince the landowners in Bishalgarh subdivision.
In a recently concluded review meeting, the state government had informed Advisor Projects, Railway Board Chandra Prakash that of the total 38 proposals for land acquisition, as many as 30 proposals involving an area measuring 4.9.10 acres have been sorted out while four proposal covering an area of 64.15 acres are at the hearing stage.
And four more proposals land measuring 39.97 acres are yet to come up for hearing, according to highly placed sources. However, the government has given promise to Railways authority to complete the land acquisition process by end of October, this year.
While Chief Secretary SK Panda chaired the meeting, Kishore Ambuly, Special Secretary, Transport department also remained present in the review meeting held here on September 17.
When contacted, an official of Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) on Thursday confirmed the problem centering the land acquisition in Bishalgarh subdivision. The 40-km Agartala-Udaipur rail project is scheduled to be completed by March 2012 next with an estimated cost of Rs. 352.95 crore.
The Ministry of Railways has already released fund of Rs. 2023.67 crore to implement the project on time.
NFR sources said, the project is expected to get over by March, 2012 if the state government manages to hand over required land to the Railways authority.
“We are being assured that the government would complete the land acquisition and hand over it to us by October 30 next.
The project will be implemented on time if the government manages to hand over the land to NFR within stipulated time”, said an official of NFR here.