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| Kashmir rail project Crucial presentation today on risk factors | | |
EARLY TIMES REPORT
Jammu, Jan 18: As many crucial questions still remained unanswered on the Kashmir rail link, upon directions of Delhi High Court, the Railway Board will tomorrow examine a presentation by a petitioner-activist on safety risks.
The Center for Public Interest Litigations (CPIL) has continuously been challenging the safety measures on rail link connecting Kashmir with rest of country. The safety questions are being debated even as the Railway Board went for a major design change to skirt the risk factors. The CIPL has been openly accusing two members of the Railway Board of suppressing the safety risks.
Following reports of grave risks to sustainability of the project, the Railway Board had undertaken a major design change and apparent project improvements in alignment. The CPIL is, however, still not satisfied and therefore has sought intervention of the High Court.
On directions of Delhi High Court, the Railway Board has fixed a meeting with CIPL counsel Prashant Bhushan who will be making a safety-risk presentation before it in New Delhi tomorrow. On January 8 this year Bhushan had accused two Railway Board members Rakesh Chopra and Shri Prakash of suppressing the safety risks inherent in the slope skirting alignment.
The PIL also pointed out that Chopra, member engineering, had undone the corrective action initiated by his predecessor S K Vij in 2008 of scrapping the much-touted plan to build the world’s tallest arch bridge on Chenab and thereby paving the way for adopting a straighter and shorter alignment based on the modern technology of tunneling through mountains.
Vij’s corrective action was based on the proposal of switching from the slope-skirting alignment to a straighter and shorter alignment as the latter was designed to reduce exposure of the railway line to land-slides in the geologically fragile Himalayan mountains from Katra to Banihal in the Jammu region.
Since the focus of the PIL is on the deficiencies of its August decision to retain the slope-skirting alignment, the board will be hard pressed to justify its failure to implement the assurance given by railway minister Mamata Banerjee in her Budget speech two months earlier that the “foremost concern” of the review of the Kashmir-link project would be “the safety of the passengers”. The PIL has accused the board of working against the interests of the nation by overlooking the “fundamental flaws in the alignment” which prevented the project from progressing more than 10% in seven years. Though the project was due to be completed in 2007, all that has been opened so far is the section in the flat terrain of the Kashmir valley while making little headway in dealing the engineering challenge of crossing the Himalayan barrier.
According to the PIL, Chopra went out of his way to persuade the board to retain the flawed alignment because he had been involved in its planning and execution in the crucial first four years of the project.
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