Aiming at expanding capacity in election-bound Bihar, the Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved two major infrastructure projects -- a Rs 3,169 crore railway line and a Rs 4,447 crore highway.
The doubling of the 177-kilometre Bhagalpur-Dumka-Rampurhat single railway line and the construction of an 82-km four-lane Mokama-Munger section of the Buxar-Bhagalpur high-speed corridor will ease transport woes, said Union Minister for Information and Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw.
"The four-lane access-controlled corridor with close tolling, supporting average vehicular speeds of 80 km/h with design speed of 100 km/h will reduce the overall travel time to approximately 1.5 hours, while offering safer, faster, and uninterrupted connectivity for both passenger and freight vehicles,' an official statement said.
The Munger-Jamalpur-Bhagalpur belt in eastern Bihar is emerging as a key industrial region focusing on ordnance factories (with one existing gun factory and another proposed by the defence ministry), a locomotive workshop, and food processing and related logistics and warehousing hubs.
"The increased economic activity in the region is expected to drive up the freight movement,' the Cabinet noted.The project will be developed in hybrid annuity mode, where the government pays 40 per cent of the project cost to the developer upfront and the remaining in annuities.
Moreover, the proposed railway line doubling will improve mobility, providing enhanced efficiency and service reliability for Indian Railways, according to the Centre.
The multi-tracking proposal will ease operations and reduce congestion, providing the much-required infrastructural development on the busiest sections across Indian Railways.
"The project covering five districts in three states, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal, will increase the existing network of the Indian Railways by about 177 km, and provide rail connectivity to prominent destinations such as Deoghar (Baba Baidyanath Dham), Tarapith (Shakti Peeth) etc., attracting pilgrims and tourists from across the country,' said the statement.
The project will enhance connectivity to nearly 441 villages and about 287,200 population.
"This is an essential route for transportation of commodities such as coal, cement, fertilisers, bricks and stones etc. The capacity augmentation works will result in additional freight traffic of magnitude 15 MTPA (Million Tonnes Per Annum)," the Cabinet said.
The existing Bhagalpur-Dumka-Rampurhat line is saturated and doubling will improve passenger and freight movement, said Vaishnaw, adding that key tourist destinations -- Deoghar and Tarapith -- will get better connectivity.
-- Dhruvaksh Saha, Business Standard
