RailEnquiry

The Bidar-Humnabad railway line will become operational on Gandhi Jayanti day (October 2). The line is part of the Bidar-Gulbarga line, which is under construction.

Announcing this here on Thursday, at a felicitation function organised by the District Congress, Railway Minister Mallikarjun Kharge said that a push pull train would run on the Bidar-Humnabad-Bidar route, as work on 60 km of the 105-km Bidar-Gulbarga line had been completed. The new line will benefit people of Bidar district immensely, he said.

For the early completion of this, he said, he had sanctioned an additional Rs 110 crore as against the provision of Rs 10 crore in this year’s budget. The project would be completed in three years. The line would have a 1.5 km-long tunnel at Margutti village and the foundation stone for the Rs 60-crore tunnel would be laid shortly.

Another major component is the construction of a railway bridge across the Bennithora rivulet at a cost of Rs 20 crore, which will also be started soon.

The other decisions announced by Kharge include converting the tri-weekly Solapur-Yeshwantpur Express into a daily train by August end or in the first week of September, commencement of electrification work on the Wadi-Gulbarga line and doubling of the Gulbarga-Hotgi line shortly, both with the assistance of the Asian Development Bank.

PM, Sonia promise funds

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi had agreed to extend additional finance to the fund- starved Railways for its massive development and expansion plans, Kharge said.

The minister said he had already met the two leaders and convinced them of the need to extend additional finance from the general pool to the railways and both had agreed to oblige. He, however, could not specify the quantum of additional funds sought.

He said the Indian Railways was facing a huge burden of salaries to 14 lakh employees and pensions to 12 lakh retired employees. This came to Rs 80,000 crore per year, out of the Railway budget outlay of Rs 1.43 lakh crore. The Railways, with a line network of 60,000 km and carrying 2.18 crore people every day, is the third biggest railway network in the world, he said.