Former Union Minister Srikant Jena, addressing a Press meet here on Sunday, said that Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik in his letter to Prime Minister Modi has only mentioned about the railway divisions but not about different portions of Odisha in different railway divisions to be brought into the East Coast Railway (ECoR) fold.
He said the Central Government’s decision to form State-centric railway zones is going to be a policy shift; and if the Government is going to form a new zone then the ECoR should not be connected with the Chakradharpur division in Jharkhand.
Rather form a division in Rourkela and include Odisha’s Rourkela-Jharsuguda portion under the Chakradharpur division under the Rourkela division. Similarly, form a division in Baleswar and include the portion of Odisha under the Kharagpur division in it, he demanded.
Jena also said that if the portions of Odisha under the Chakradharpur and Kharagpur divisions are brought under the ECoR, the zone can provide Rs 10,000-crore more revenue to the Railways as the freight movement is the highest in Odisha.
He demanded that the State Government submit a specific proposal to the Centre that if the zones are formed on State-centric basis then the revenue provided by the ECoR should be recycled in Odisha for the development of railway in the State.
He said the income of the ECoR is being directly sent to the Indian Railways and later being redistributed as per passengers in different States while in Odisha passengers are very less. The operational cost in the State is lowest in the country as the passenger traffic is less and it is less as rail lines and trains are not there. If the passenger rate increases, the employment rate would increase, he said.
The Indian Railways has more than 20 lakh job opportunities, but even half a per cent of youths of Odisha have not got jobs in railways. The ECoR, among the 17 zones, gives the highest revenue to the railways, i.e, around Rs 10,000-crore profit per year, but it gets very less amount as compared to the revenue generated, Jena said.