Friday, May 20, 2022

Centre back‘tracks’ on Telangana rail projects

By PS Dileep

Published: Published Date - 12:25 AM, Mon - 24 January 22

Hyderabad: Decades of utter neglect of the Telangana region by successive governments in undivided Andhra Pradesh triggered the Statehood movement in 2001. TRS president K Chandrashekhar Rao achieved what he had set out for in 2014 – Statehood for Telangana. The political dominance of Andhra leaders over Telangana came to an end, and the new State began to flourish.

But, the injustice to Telangana continues even today, only that it has shifted to a different quarter now — the BJP government in New Delhi. In the past seven-plus years since its formation, Telangana has made unprecedented strides on all fronts, giving the other more established and major States a run for their money, all without the Centre lending a helping hand to the new State. One can imagine what Telangana would have achieved by now had the union government extended the assistance that the State rightfully deserved.

Infrastructure plays a key role in the growth story of any State. Instead of helping Telangana create a healthy rail infrastructure that would complement its rapid overall growth, the union government chose to consistently ignore even what was promised in the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014. Not only did the union government not deliver on the bifurcation act’s assurance of a railway coach factory at Kazipet, but it also turned deaf ear to repeated pleas by the State government for sanction of new projects including railway stations, railway lines and underpasses.

In 1980, the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi representing Medak Parliamentary constituency in Lok Sabha promised an ordinance factory at Medak and a railway coach factory at Kazipet. While the first promise was fulfilled subsequently, the second continues to evade Telangana. Despite the assurance given in Schedule 13 of the AP Reorganisation Act, the Centre continues to deny Telangana what it should get as its right.

Just as it did in the case of according national project status for the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme, the Centre resorted to lies on the coach factory issue too. In March 2016, the then Minister of State for Railway Manoj Singh declared that there was no scope for setting up coach factory anywhere in the country. The Centre, however, took a U-turn within two years, in 2018, when it readily agreed to set up a coach factory at Latur in Maharashtra. The railway coach factory in Maharashtra was approved with a project outlay of Rs 625 crore within four months of the initial proposal being made. The reasons are not far to seek. The BJP, known for its opportunistic politics, was in power in Maharashtra when the new factory was announced just ahead of the State Assembly elections.

What is even more perplexing is the Centre’s utterly step-motherly treatment given the fact that the Telangana government had already allocated 60 acres in Kazipet for the coach factory besides releasing Rs 40 crore.

The coach factory aside, the Centre would not even sanction new railway projects for a State that had set up a scorching pace in growth and development. Barring the Kothapalli-Manoharabad railway line, no other major railway project was taken up in the State since 2014-15. Telangana is one of the very few States to have come forward to take up joint venture railway projects, but those too have made little progress, thanks to the indifferent attitude of the Centre. Then there are projects where detailed surveys were done but works are yet to begin. The Kothapalli- Manoharabad railway line is the only project that has taken off and is being implemented with major support from the State government in terms of free land provision as well as 1/3rd contribution towards the cost.

The indifferent attitude of the Indian Railways is clearly evident in the way projects are dealt with in Telangana. The majority of around 11 high potential projects totalling 1,486 km which were proposed before State formation are said to have been shelved. This include Karimnagar-Mankondur- Huzurabad-Kazipet (61.80 km), Mancherial- Adilabad via Utnoor (160.58 km), Manuguru- Ramagundem via Bhoopalapalli (211 km), Nandyala-Jadcherla (182.4 km), Koyagudam Mines- Tadikalpudi (19 km), Bhadrachalam road- Visakhapatnam (277 km), Hyderabad- Srisailam upto Acchampet (171 km), Siddipet- Akkanapet (50 km), Washim- Mahur- Adilabad (255.4 km), Patancheru-Sangareddy ( 89.10 km), and by-pass line at Pagidipalli ( 10.20 km). Further, the fate of survey reports pertaining to around 25 high priority projects which were submitted several years ago to the railway board remains unknown.

As per railway statistics released in 2018, Telangana has only 1,823 km of railway route against the 67,368 km of the railway network in the country.

Despite being part of South Central Railway, one of the highest revenue-generating divisions of the Indian Railways, the Telangana region was always ignored in erstwhile Andhra Pradesh and continues to face the same situation even now. The four BJP MPs from the State including Tourism Minister G Kishan Reddy can’t be blind to established facts, but would they dare take up these issues concerning the railways during the upcoming union budget? Only time will tell.