laying stress on implementation of all railway and National Highway projects in the State, Chief Secretary JK Mohapatra on Saturday directed the concerned departmental and NHAI authorities to expedite the various statutory processes on pipeline and fast-track all ongoing projects.

The issues were discussed at a meeting chaired by the Chief Secretary in the Secretariat. Railway projects like new 154-km Talcher- Bimlagarh railway line, new Khordha-Balangir railway line, Angul-Sukinda (98.7 km) mineral ore export import traffic railway line, Haridaspur-Paradeep (SPV mode) railway line, Jharsuguda-Rengali doubling and Jharsuguda- Barapali (52.41 km) coal dispatch railway line projects were outlined for discussion.

Besides, issues relating to forest and environmental clearances, social impact study, DGPS survey, land acquisition, contract award, progress of ongoing work and providing of bank guarantee about the revenue sharing by the developer were also discussed.

The issue of land acquisition has been a major stumbling block for implementation of various projects. However, keeping in view the ensuing elections and enforcement of the model code of conduct, it was decided to put off the tendering process for the pipeline projects.A Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) has already been constituted for execution of these railways projects including the Railway Vikas Nigam limited (RVNl) as the major stakeholder.The meeting also discussed the status of the NHAI projects, both ongoing and pipeline. The Chief Secretary asked the project developers to submit detail work plans with timeline along with all forest clearances.The major National Highway projects include Cuttack-Angul NH and Angul-Sambalpur NH.