KURNOOL: Hope is pinned on the completion of a railway coach midlife workshop at Kurnool as the local MP sought intervention of the Gadwal collector to solve the contentious land issue.
About 7.5 acres of land that falls on the Telangana side ran into dispute as the landowners sought a higher compensation. The issue is heading towards resolution and the Gadwal collector would expedite the land acquisition.
The project had been sanctioned with an outlay of Rs 562 crore to an extent of 123 acres being taken up from the Alampur Road railway station in Mahabubnagar district to E Thandrapadu and Panchalingala in Kurnool district.
Kurnool MP Sanjeev Kumar said the project was at its last stage and only land alienation from the perspective of the government of Telangana state needed to be addressed.
Once the workshop is ready, it can undertake periodic overhauling and the railways will install machines, including bogie testing apparatus, surface wheel lathe, plasma profile-cutting machines and other essential plants required for the smooth functioning of the workshop.
With an optimum capacity to repair 50 coaches per month, the factory will start processes at its carriage repair shop. “The intermediary overhauling block and periodical overhauling will be properly designed,” the MP said.
The first phase will be completed to undertake repair of non-AC coaches and gradually, once the augmentation phase is completed, it will also take up maintenance of the AC coaches,” he said.
When contacted, Jogulamba Gadwal collector Vallur Kranthi said the land alienation issue is being taken up and its resolution expected in the near future.
Explaining the bottlenecks faced by railway projects, a South Central Railway official said timely completion of any railway project depends on factors like a quick land acquisition by state government, forest clearance by officials of the forest department, shifting of infringing utilities (both underground and overground), statutory clearances from various authorities, geological and topographical conditions of the area, law and order situation around the project site and the number of working months in a year due to climatic conditions.
Also important in this context are the cooperation and zeal of the state government for early completion of the project, encountering unforeseen conditions like an earthquake, flooding, excessive rains, strikes of labour, orders of courts, situation and conditions of working agencies/contractors etc, he said.
