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| Train to Kashmir running late by 20 years? | | | Early Times Report
Jammu, June 3: Even as the state’s nine Members of the Parliament from both Houses –all in the ruling United Progressive Alliance camp –vow to drive the much awaited train to Kashmir, there is a new and shocking revelation –under the present flawed alignment marred with irregularities the train might as well be rain as late as 20 years from the scheduled date of 2007, which is already two years past.
The Udhampur-Qazigund stretch of the rail line connecting Kashmir Valley with rest of the country has long been marred with controversies and Early Times was the first newspapers in the state to have exclusively reported the plans of realignment in September 2008.
In a development, the Delhi metro chief E Sreedharan has blown the whistle on the irregularities in the seven-year-old railway project of linking Kashmir valley with the rest of the country.
If the present alignment of laying the track along landslide-prone mountain slopes is not scrapped, Sreedharan said that the project which was due to be completed in 2007 could take another 20 years and the line would still be unsafe and unstable.
In a letter on May 19 to an expert committee reviewing the proposal of changing the present alignment, Sreedharan stated during the last seven years the project on the present alignment could show only a progress of 10%. At this rate, the project would take another 20 years for completion and the cost would go up four to five times.
Sreedharan's intervention in the J&K project follows a request made to him on March 26 by the then member (engineering) in the railway board, S K Vij, five days before his retirement.
Sreedharan backed Vij's idea of switching to a straighter and shorter alignment, which is designed to avoid exposure to landslides as it uses advanced technology of tunnelling through mountains from Katra to Banihal. As a corollary, Sreedharan endorsed the proposal of increasing the gradient from 1:100 to 1:40 since the entire route would anyway be electrified.
It remains to be seen whether the expert committee, will accept Sreedharan's advise to depart completely from the present alignment. The committee headed by former railway board chairman M Ravindra is however under pressure to suggest retention of the present alignment with minor changes. This is because, Vij's successor Rakesh Chopra and member Shri Prakash issued an order last month stating that the gradient should in no circumstances exceed 1:80.
The order seeks to undermine the discretion of the expert committee as it makes it harder to straighten the present serpentine alignment and raises the prospect of reviving the much-touted Chenab bridge.
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