RAILWAY SAMACHAR

Railways skirt their own Kashmir fiasco

NEW DELHI : Improper planning and lack of accountability have sabotaged the 345-km Jammu-Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla rail link project. The national project with immense strategic importance was inaugurated in 2002 and fast-tracked to connect the Srinagar valley with the rest of the country. However, the past 8 years has seen only 10% progress in key sections and losses and contractor claims running into thousands of crores. With alternative solutions and safety concerns repeatedly ignored by Railways leadership and hidden from the minister, the engineering fiasco has bungled on.

There are three sections in question. The Qazikund-Baramulla (119 km) stretch in the valley is the only one completed, but not without the stench of corruption. According to a retired Member of the Board, the Rs 2,461 crore spent by January 2009 on this flatter section included needless expenditure on a raised embankment and hundreds of culverts, planned only for the benefit of contractors. This expenditure, by now three times what it should have been, has escaped scrutiny due to dramatic problems faced along the other two mountainous sections. The short Udhampur-Katra (25 km) stretch has been delayed by 6 years due to collapsing tunnels. And the most critical Katra-Qazikund (148 km) stretch has barely even taken off, bedeviled by shoddy assessment of the geological and seismic realities of the Himalayas and ignorance of the latest international engineering practices.

At the centre of the controversy is Railway Board Member, Engineering (ME) Mr Rakesh Chopra, involved in the problematic project plan since its inception and responsible for scuttling alternatives. Recent judgments of the Central Administrative Tribunal and the Delhi High Court have found that Mr Chopra ‘time and again’ prevented the Railway minister from learning about an alternative alignment plan for the Katra-Banihal stretch prepared by Mr Chopra’s junior officer Mr Alok Verma. The rulings state that Mr Chopra not only muzzled Mr Verma’s criticism, but also abused power and worked with ‘mala-fide’ intention by transferring Mr Verma away from his project post twice.

The original Katra-Qazikund alignment was criticised as early as 2003. However, it was only in 2007, when Mr Verma made a presentation to the Railway Board, that ignoring the underlying reasons for failures on the ground become impossible. Despite investments of Rs 750 crore and contracts worth Rs 1,000 crore already awarded, Mr SK Vij, ME in 2008, found enough reason to suspend work along the Katra-Banihal stretch and order the establishment of a committee to study the existing and the alternative alignments. In 2009, DMRC chief Mr E Sreedharan also gave his opinion to the committee chairman. Mr Sreedharan strongly criticised the original alignment, which would take another 20 years to complete at 4-5 times the cost and argued that even then the resulting bridges and track ‘would not be stable from a security point of view.’

Mr Sreedharan thereby supported Mr Verma’s alternative plan that sought to substantially reduce not only the cost of the Katra-Banihal route, but also its length from 126 to 68 km, its bridges from 94 to 7, and its tunnels from 64 to 8, by avoiding a serpentine route and instead tunneling straight through the centre of the mountains at a sharper gradient. In detailing his alternative alignment, Mr Verma exposed how the track was being laid along the contours of seismic fault-lines, with tunnels collapsing by virtue of being built on the sides of young mountains vulnerable to landslides.

In its final recommendations, the high-level committee suggested abandoning 75% of the original alignment. However, the committee suffered from politics and failed to mention Mr Verma’s alternative plan or examine the safety risks involved in retaining the parameters of the original alignment. Mr Chopra, who had by now taken over from Mr Vij as ME, immediately administered Mr Verma’s second transfer away from the project as soon as the officer pointed out the committee’s omissions. Today, work along the Katra-Banihal section remains at a stand-still; while the problematic original alignment awaits its serpentine implementation.

When questioned about the recent High Court ruling, Mr Rakesh Chopra, stated, before his retirement, that he is not in charge and that the Railway Board should be contacted with questions. The Board has itself not yet implemented any of the Tribunal or High Court orders, the most important of which, in terms of national interest, is arranging a meeting where Mr Verma can present Railway minister Miss Mamata Banerjee with his alternative alignment plan so that the minister can make an informed decision on the future of the bungled project.

With both Mr Chopra and the Board continuing to prevent Mr Verma’s viewpoint from reaching the minister, the only question that remains is not for the Board, which even the High Court has found to be compromised, but the minister. Is Miss Banerjee herself interested in learning about a view, supported by Mr E Sreedharan and ex-ME Mr SK Vij, which claims to offer a cheaper and safer solution and explains why the present Kashmir Rail link project plan is doomed to fail?