(a) whether the railways has received representations from various organisations/road users as well as from Government of Gujarat for gauge conversion, new railway lines and doubling of railway lines;
(b) if so, the details thereof; and
(c) the time by which the work is likely to start along with the probable time-frame for each project?
MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF RAILWAYS
(SHRI MANOJ SINHA)
(a) to (c): A Statement is laid on the Table of the House.
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STATEMENT REFERRED TO IN REPLY TO PARTS (a) TO (c) OF UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 4016 BY SHRI DEVUSINH CHAUHAN, SHRI RAJESHBAI CHUDASAMA, SHRI VINOD LAKHAMASHI CHAVDA, SHRIMATI JAYSHREEBEN PATEL AND SHRI D.S. RATHOD TO BE ANSWERED IN LOK SABHA ON 23.12.2015 REGARDING GAUGE CONVERSION
(a) to (c): Requests for new lines, gauge conversion and doubling, both formal as well as informal, are received by Railways at various levels i.e. Railway Board, Zonal Railways and Divisional Headquarters, etc. As receipt of such requests/suggestions is a continuous and dynamic process, centralized compendium of such requests is not maintained. However, in recent past Government of Gujarat has suggested certain works, the details of which are appended.
Two new lines, eight gauge conversion & nine doubling projects covering a length of 363 km., 1467 km & 984 km and costing ` 3766 crore, ` 6510 crore & ` 6477 crore respectively falling fully/partly in the State of Gujarat have been sanctioned which will help in development of ports and industries. On these projects, an expenditure of ` 3688 crore has been incurred upto March, 2015, with an outlay of ` 3078 crore for the year 2015-16.
Completion of these projects is dependent upon many factor such as land acquisition, statutory clearances like forestry and wild life clearances, shifting of services, cutting of trees, construction of road over bridges and road under bridges by road maintaining agencies, apart from availability of adequate funds. Since many of these factors are beyond the control of Ministry of Railways, timelines for completion of all the projects are not feasible to be fixed.
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