The Forum for Ganjam, an umbrella organisation of political parties, intellectuals, NGOs and the general public, has written a letter to Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu urging him to revise the railway budgetary allocation for south Odisha.
In the letter, members of the forum stated that the entire south Odisha has been neglected in the budget as a meager of `1 crore out of the total `4,682 sanctioned for Odisha has been allocated for the entire south Odisha.
“We had been requesting to make budgetary allocation for the wagon manufacturing unit at Sitala Palli near here that had been proposed in the 2012 UPA Government’s railways budget. To our utter disappointment, only `1,000 token money has again been given for the factory in this year’s budget. Besides, the Brahmapur-Sambalpur line has been proposed this year but with only `1 lakh allocation. Similarly, we had been requesting for trains connecting Brahmapur with Rourkela and New Delhi, but it has been denied to us,” the letter mentioned.
The body demanded for a supplementary budgetary allocation for a modern railway wagon manufacturing factory at Sitala Palli, sufficient fund for the proposed railway lines, including Brahmapur-Sambalpur and Jeypore-Malkangiri and new trains to connect Brahmapur with Rourkela and Puri directly or extend of the running trains between Rourkela and Bhubaneswar to Brahmapur.
The body also demanded that new trains be sanctioned for Delhi and Mumbai from Brahmapur and the Brahmapur railway station be expanded and renovated to meet the modern standards of basic amenities, said member Sudhir Rout.