Senior BJP leader and former Assembly Deputy Speaker Rama Chandra Panda recently submitted a memorandum to Minister of Railway Sadananda Gowda, demanding adequate railway facilities for the Brahmapur city.
The heritage city is the commercial and educational nerve centre of entire south Odisha with massive travellers boarding various trains at the Brahmapur station, which provides highest revenue to the Indian Railways. However, the services remain poor in the station, Panda said.
The Hirakund Express which is the only train to Delhi from Brahmapur is running three days in a week giving rise to serious public discontentment. Panda demanded that the train be made daily.
Though around five lakh people of the region are currently working in Surat for their livelihoods and have to depend on rail service most frequently, there is no regular train from Brahmapur to Surat. The existing Puri-Ahmedabad Express is currently running four days in a week and hence, there is a need to convert it to a daily train, Panda urged.
Similarly, the narrow gauge from Palasa to Gunupur via Paralakhemundi (Gajapati) under the East Coast Railway which was converted to broad gauge during the last NDA Government still remains neglected. There is only one passenger train running from Puri to Gunupur. It takes about twelve hours (instead of five hours) to cover a distance of about 250 km. This being the only train catering to the communication needs of the people of both Andhra Pradesh ( Srikakulam district) and Odisha (Gajapati district) covering a substantial tribal area, it is neither useful to office goers nor devotees of the region who are keen to visit Puri for darshan of lord Jagannath for its longer hours, Panda said and urged Gowda to run a daily Intercity Express from Gunupur to Bhubaneswar with limited stopovers.