Hardly any cheer

Hardly cheerful
There is hardly anything to cheer as for as Karnataka is concerned in the railway budget for the year 2006-07, except for the fact that the Samparka Kranti Express connecting national capital with the state capital of Bangalore would run via Arasikere –Hubli- Belgaum and a slight increase in the allocation for the ongoing railway projects in the state. The new trains which are to be introduced from Bangalore serve other states more than Karnataka.
For a long time, there had been demand that the Samparka Kranti Express between Bangalore and Newdelhi hardly served Karnataka in its existing route, which was via Guntakal and Secunderabad. And the change of route would mean that it would through the Karnataka area right from Bangalore upto Belgaum and Miraj before entering Maharashtra for its onward journey.
While it is true that the downward trend in the investment in the ongoing railway projects in Karnataka, which had been noticed for the past couple of years, none of them are anywhere near reaching the immediate goal to give the state the satisfaction of having got something tangible after a long wait.
The Railways have provided a little more than Rs. 200 crores in the budget for the nearly two dozen ongoing projects in Karnataka, the outlay for which stands now at around Rs. 5000 crores, and the state needs still Rs. 4100 crores for the completion of the projects without the cost escalation. If the present trend of investment is to be continued for the years to follow, the Karnataka will have to wait for 20 years for the completion of the project, provided there is no upward revision of the costs. The situation as for as the four projects taken up as a part of the cost sharing experiment with the state government, is in no way different, with the South Western Railway officials claiming that the failure on the part of the state government to meet its part of the bargain, has impeded the progress. The State Government has not exactly helped to clarify the matters, since its plans for the participation in the projects, gets hardly reflected in the budget, thus leading to speculation as to whether the State Government is really interested in accelerating the pace of the development of the projects at all.
It may be incidentally mentioned here that Karnataka had always nursed a feeling of neglect at the hands of the railways for want of a focused approach towards the holistic development of the state, mainly because the state came under the administrative jurisdiction of at least four zonal railways. It was from this point of view that the formation of the South Western Railway with headquarters at Hubli had evoked lot of expectations in the minds of the people about the pace of the railway projects being expedited. But the South Western Railway, as has now been formed still excludes at least one fourth of the Karnataka areas, namely the North Eastern portion comprising of the four districts of Bidar, Gulbarga, Raichur and Koppal from the purview, with the area being tagged on to the South Central Railway, while some small portions still continuing to be under the jurisdiction of Central Railway and Southern Railway in Gulbarga and Dakshina Kannada districts.
Karnataka has at the moment, around two dozen ongoing railway projects envisaging a total investment of Rs. 4953 crores. These include seven new line projects namely, Kottur-Harihar (65 kms), Kadur Chikmagalur ; Hassan Bangalore via Shravanabelagola (166 kms); Hubli Ankola (165 kms); Bangalore-Satyamangalam (260 km); Dharmavaram Penukonda Puttaparthi (60km) all coming under the South Western Railway and Gulbarga Bidar (140 kms); Munirabad Mehboobnagar ( 246 km); and Raichur Gadwal ( 67 kms); seven gauge conversion works – namely Bangalore Hubli-Shimoga-Talaguppa; (630km), Arsikere Hassan Mangalore (236 kms), Solapur-Gadag (300 km), Mysore Hassan (118 kms) , Yeswhantpur Salem (197 kms), Mysore Chamarajanagar with Extension upto Mettupalyam (148 kms), Yelahanka Chikballapur Kolar Bangarpet all under South Western Railway . Besides, there are six projects pertaining to the doubling of the lines namely Whitefield Bangarpet Kuppam (81 kms), Bangalore-Kengeri, Kengeri Ramanagaram, Yeswantpur-Tumkur (64 km), Bangalore Whitefield-KRPuram all under South Western Railway and the Reninguta Bellary under the South Central Railway.
Karnataka got the real breakthrough as for as railway development projects were concerned, during the days of Mr. Jaffer Sharief as the Union Minister for Railways in the first half of the nineties and it was during this phase that major strides were taken to bring the state in the broadgauge map of the country, as a part of the unigauge plan drawn up by the Railways then. Substantial work of broadgauging of the line linking Miraj with Bangalore via Hubli, Guntakal with Bangalore on one side and Hubli on the other, Bangalore-My sore were taken up for gauge conversion programme and a new railway line providing an alternative link between Bellary to Bangalore via Chitradurga were laid and the Hassan Mangalore line became a reality. But after the exit of Mr. Sharief, there has been a substantial slowdown of the gauge conversion and the new line programmes. Almost all the projects initiated during the period, have been practically languishing for want of sufficient allocation and attention. Added to this have been the projects sanctioned and included in the railway budget during the days of the United Front Government headed by Mr. H D Devegowda.
Kottur Harihar new line, which would provide an alternate cost effective interior route for the movement of goods and passenger traffic, is small projects looking to the investment and the line length. But it had had long gestation period and it was listed under the projects recommended for being frozen, before being put on track.
Hubli Ankola new line project has been a project designed to meet the aspirations of the people of the state, who have been dreaming about it for over century designed to provide a port connection to the hinterland of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh. It has been caught in a quagmire of environmental project and has been hardly making any progress.
The Munirabad Mehboobnagar, Gulbarga Bidar , the Raichur Gadwal, have hardly made any progress. The only new line project, which has been able to make substantial progress has been the Hassan Bangalore via Shravanabelagola, which has been completed upto Shravanabelagola with more than half of the outlay having been spent.
The 300 km Solapur Gadag broadgauge conversion via Bijapur and Bagalkot has remained a classical case of neglect. The project had been essentially designed to end the metergauge island and provide another north south corridor for the movement of the goods traffic via Solapur Bijapur and Gadag. Thanks to public uproar and the agitation, the railways completed the first 100 km stretch upto Bijapur and the progress in the latter 200 km stretch has been inexorably slow. It has been a typical case of missed deadlines with promise of the early completion going awry. There has been nono word as yet as to whether the link upto Bagalkot would be provided this year and when exactly Bagalkot Gadag would be covered. The only project to show some progress has been the Arsikere Hassan Mangalore.
The state has a cost sharing arrangement as for as four projects are concerned namely, , namely the Kottur Harihar newline, the Arsikere Hassan Mangalore and Solapur Gadag broadgauge conversions, and the two doubling of the line projects. And the extent of participation varies from project to project. This has hardly achieved the objective of increasing the pace because of the uncertainty over the flow of funds from the state government, as is openly quoted openly by the South Western Railway authorities
(ends) 04:30:47 hrs. March 8, 2006