NRO Professor Dr Digambara Patra of the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, has urged for sanction of funds in the upcoming Railway Budget 2023-24 for the Junagarh Road Nabarangpur rail line, which is a long-awaited project.
Prof Patra has written a letter in this regard to Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and cited reference to President Droupadi Murmu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Kalahandi MP Basanta Panda. He stated that presently, the Jeypore-Nabarangpur rail line is under progress but the Nabarangpur-Junagarh Road connection has not yet been sanctioned and no budgetary allocation has been made for its construction work.
He also reminded the Railway Minister of his promise he had given during his visit to Kalahandi that the line would pass through Dharamgarh.
For all practical purposes, the Nabarangpur-Junagarh Road rail connection would give better service to people of the Nabarangpur district. The people in Nabarangpur would use Junagarh Road/Kesinga stations to reach Bhubaneswar, western Odisha and major cities in India to save time, he said.
Prof Patra further said that in 1962-63 late Kalahandi MP Maharaja Pratap Keshari Deo had raised in the Parliament that Parkers had done a railway line survey from Kesinga to Nabarangpur to join Kothavalasa Kirandul (KK) line. Subsequently, in 1991, the Lanjigarh Road-Junagarh line was approved to connect with the KK line at Ambagura via Nabarangpur. 56 km of Lanjigarh road-Junagarh rail line took 25 years to get completed, however, a survey of the Junagarh-Ambaguda portion of the route was completed in 2012. The route has a rate of return (RoR) above 14 %, far better than the approved Nabarangpur-Jeypore or Jeypore-Malkangiri route.
As per the initial Railway’s proposal, Junagarh Road-Amagura was supposed to be an extension of the Lanjigarh Road-Junagadh Road rai line; therefore, the extension work should have started as soon as Lanjigarh Road-Junagarh Road rail line was completed in 2012-13. Unfortunately, it did not happen. A decade has passed, no solid action has been made and the process is taking a long time, moving in snail’s space, told Prof Patra.
