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| Probe in Udh-Q’gund railway line blunder | | |
Early Times Report
Jammu, Feb 12: The Central Vigilance Commission has initiated probe in scrapping of an ambitious project leading to change of alignment of Udhampur-Qazigund Railway line after construction loses of nearly Rs 500 Crores.
The vigilance probe is meant to fix personal accountability on the officers who failed to take corrective action despite repeated failures that resulted in construction losses of Rs 470 crore (due to collapses of tunnels) and contractor claims of Rs 800 crore (due to idling resources).
The documentary evidence unearthed by the vigilance team shows that the officers in charge of the project had received ample warnings from within the system about the infeasibility of the alignment of the railway track, which had been hastily adopted in 2002 when the then PM A B Vajpayee announced the "national project".
The earliest warning came in 2003 when the then MD of Konkan Railway Corporation Limited, B Rajaram, made a strong case for changing the alignment as his organization had been contracted to execute a substantial part of the project, including the Chenab bridge.
In a four-page letter dated September 19, 2003, Rajaram urged the then head of the project, Rakesh Chopra, "not to hastily force the finalisation of contracts for a partially examined alignment, with no guarantee as to where we are going to reach, because we have only a paper concept alignment with no ground details".
Brushing aside Rajaram's concerns, Chopra wrote on October 10, 2003 that "geology does not determine railway alignments" and that the detailed project report (DPR) had taken all the relevant factors into account. Chopra's assurance proved to be baseless as, for instance, the international consortium engaged to build the Chenab mega arch bridge could not even dig its foundations due to the instability of the near-vertical faces of the gorge.
The records under vigilance scrutiny show that Chopra could however have his way because of the backing he had received from the then GM of Northern Railway, R R Jaruhar. When a fresh proposal was made in 2006 to change the alignment, Jaruhar, in his next avatar as member engineering in the Railway Board, rejected it despite all the failures that had taken place by then.
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