Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, who presented the 2006-07 Railway Budget in Lok Sabha on Friday, is not worried about the loud protests by the Left parties over the dedicated freight line and hoped that the matter will be amicably resolved soon.
"There was nothing wrong with the speech. The Left were protesting because they wanted to take the dedicated freight line to Kolkata. I too want that line to go to Kolkata. Sab theek ho jayega (Everything will be sorted)," Lalu told rediff.com.
Later, instead of addressing the media as he did last year, he left it to the Chairman of the Railway Board Jitender P Batra to answer queries.
"We have chose the line from Sonenagar to Ludhiana, because Sonenagar is the hub of loading activity and is well connected with the feeder routes to Tata Nagar, Bukaro, Durgapur and other such places," Batra said.
According to the earlier survey the dedicated line was to connect Delhi-Mumbai and Kolkata but that was not found to be a feasible proposition and hence a new route was found out.
"We have not done a survey as yet. We hope to get the report by October or November and then we would write to the various state governments for land acquisition," he said.