Vijayawada: Centre creates new railway zone, Vizag headquarters

Vijayawada: In a major development, the Centre on Wednesday made a surprise announcement of creating a new railway zone with Visakhapatnam as its headquarters.

The new zone will be called South Coast Railway (SCoR) with Gunt-ur, Guntakal and Waltair divisions. The demand for the separate railway zone with Vizag as its headquarters has been there for more than a decade now, even before a separate Telangana agitation gained mome-ntum around 2009.This announcement comes ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s scheduled visit to Vizag on March 1. BJP’s Vizag MP  K. Haribabu went to polls in 2014 on the plank of achieving a railway zone with Vizag as the headquarters.

As per item 8 of Schedule 13 (Infrastructure) of the Andhra Pradesh Reorganization Act, 2014, Indian Railw-ays was required to exa-mine establishing a new railway zone in the successor State of Andhra Pradesh. The matter has been examined in detail in consultation with stake holders and it has been decided to go ahead with the creation of a new zone with headquarters at Visakhapa-tnam.

The new zone named “South Coast Railw-ay (SCoR)”, will comprise of existing Guntakal, Guntur and Vijayawada divisions. Waltair division shall be split into two parts. One part of Waltair division will be incorporated in the new zone i.e. in South Coast Railway and will be merged with the neighbouring Vijaywada division. Remaining portion of Waltair division shall be converted into a new division with headquarter at Rayagada under East Coast Railway (EcoR).

"South Central Railw-ay will comprise of Hyd-erabad, Secunderabad and Nanded divisions", said Railway Minister Mr Piyush Goyal.