No separate railway division for Kalaburagi: Ashwini Vaishnaw

New Delhi: Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Wednesday said that there was no proposal before the Railway Ministry to create a separate Railway Division for Kalaburagi region.

The ministry had earlier formed an expert panel to study the demand for creation of a separate division of Kalaburagi. However, the committee suggested that there was no need to create a new division. The ministry rejected the demand based on the committee recommendations, he said in a Question Hour in Lok Sabha.

To another question, the minister said the ministry has approved the construction of a 44 km new line between Chikkaballapura and Gauribidanur. The survey work for Chikkaballapura-Puttaparthi and Srinivaspura-Madanapalli was completed. Since passenger traffic was low on these routes, the railway has not approved new lines, the Minister said.

For constructing a new line between Marikuppam-Kuppam, the railways has approved a proposal in 2013 with the investment of Rs 279 crore. 320 acres of land required in total for this project both in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. However, Andhra Pradesh has not handed over 70 acres of land to railways. Once land was handed over, the new line construction would be taken up, he said.

The minister said the railways would take a positive decision on extending Mangaluru Central-Kabaka Puttur passenger train to Subrahmanya Road station. Earlier, Dakshina Kannada Lok Sabha member Brijesh Chowta urged the minister to restart a passenger train between Mangalore-Subrahmanya Road.

Though earlier there was a passenger train between these two destinations, the railways stopped while constructing broad gauge of this line. At present, one passenger train is operating between Mangaluru Central-Kabaka Puttur and the same should be extended to Subrahmanya Road, Chowta demanded in Lower House.