Nizamabad-Adilabad railway line back on track

The 125-kilometre long line will be a boon to this region, in particular for Nirmal district which is short on railway connectivity. It will connect Nirmal with Adilabad and Nizamabad districts.

Adilabad: The much-awaited Nizamabad-Nirmal-Adilabad railway line finally appears to back on track, with the Railways recently issuing a notification inviting tenders to conduct a Final Location Survey (FLS) to construct a broad gauge railway line from Nizamabad to Adilabad via Nirmal and Armoor towns recently.

The starting date for the bidding is August 22, while the last date is September 5. The period of the survey is eight months. The value of the survey is Rs.13.56 crore, as per the notification.

---

Some of the tasks in the survey included fixing of alignment, pegging out centre line, taking levels and finalisation of land requirement, calculation of waterway requirement for all the proposed bridges, preparation of general arrangement of drawing of bridges, station yards and project sheets and submission of detailed estimates including traffic survey report.

The tasks must be performed using stereo satellite imagery data as obtained from National Remote Sensing Centre. The survey should be carried out using Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology and with the help of software for generation of Digital Evaluation Model.

The 125-kilometre long line will be a boon to this region, in particular for Nirmal district which is short on railway connectivity. It will connect Nirmal with Adilabad and Nizamabad districts. People of both Adilabad and Nirmal districts have been demanding both State and union governments to form the network and enhance connectivity of the two entities for quite a long time.

At present, passengers are forced to travel 435 kilometres, passing the neighboring Maharashtra to reach Hyderabad through the existing railway line between Adilabad headquarters and the State capital. But, the distance between Adilabad and Hyderabad is 300 km by road. Travel distance will drastically be reduced with the advent of the line.

In 2017, Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao assured to share 50 percent of the cost when a delegation of the then ministers Jogu Ramanna and A Indrakaran Reddy met him. Former Adilabad MP G Nagesh had requested the then Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu for funds for the long pending project. But there was no progress since then, putting the project in cold storage.

However, a line was included in the Capital Investment Programme 2017-18, subject to sharing of the cost by the State and Centre. A Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the Telangana government and Ministry of Railways to form an umbrella Joint Venture to undertake project development, resource mobilisation, monitoring of mutually identified rail infrastructure projects, according to a reply given by the then Railway minister of State Rajen Gohan in September 2017. After that, it is now that the project has seen some movement.