The Railway Board has cancelled a railway undertaking connecting Bhatni in Deoria district to Hathua in Bihar’s Gopalganj district, bringing cheer to farmers who had been protesting towards the acquisition of land for the rail line. The railways dropped the undertaking attributable to “delay in land acquisition”.
The undertaking — 67 km of the observe was to be in Bihar and 12.45 km in UP — was sanctioned in 2005-’06 when Lalu Prasad Yadav was the Railway Minister. It was then estimated to value Rs 230 crore. Among the ten proposed halts was Yadav’s village Phulwaria in Gopalganj. For the railway line in UP, the federal government deliberate to take over greater than 41 hectares of land from 14 villages in Deoria.
On receiving land acquisition notices, the farmers began to protest. They shaped a Bhumi Bachao Kishan Sangharsh Samiti and launched a marketing campaign towards land acquisition and the development of the observe. The Samiti despatched memoranda to numerous authorities, elevating objections and likewise began a sit-in at Bhatni.
Last yr, the UP authorities wrote to the chief administrative officer of North Eastern Railway, Gorakhpur, requesting the Railways to rethink the undertaking. After a number of rounds of talks between state authorities officers and the Railways, the Railway Board determined to drop the undertaking.
“We considered dropping the project on various issues and among them was delay in land acquisition and there was proper railway connectivity in those regions,” North-Eastern Railway Chief Public Relations Officer Pankaj Singh stated on Friday.
The farmers protesting towards the railway line additionally expressed happiness with the Railway Board’s choice. “We are happy to know that the Railway Board has dropped the project. The project was prepared only to please Lalu Prasad and his family because the railway line was proposed to connect their villages,” stated TN Mishra, president of the Bhumi Bachao Kishan Sangharsh Samiti.
The samiti additionally objected since greater than 1,000 farmers set to lose their land had been small and marginal agriculturists.
After deciding to not go forward with the undertaking, the Railway Board wrote a letter to the state authorities, asking it to return Rs 9.24 crore it had given for the land acquisition. The board stated the cash had been despatched to the district Justice of the Peace of Deoria from 2007 to 2010. When contacted, District Magistrate Amit Kishore stated, “We returned the money to the Railways recently.”
