‘Railway minister assures transfer of Digha rail line land to state’

PATNA: Railway minister Piyush Goyal has assured Bihar’s deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi to complete the formalities soon for the transfer of Digha-Patna rail line land to the state government for construction of a four-lane road on it.
In a press release on Sunday, Modi said he met Goyal in New Delhi on Saturday and requested him to transfer the land to state government. The issue has been pending since 2009.Modi said the rail track is 150 years old and exists on 71.25 acre land.
The strip of land is almost 40 metres wide on which a passenger train is plied twice per day despite the fact that the railways suffers huge financial losses every year. According to records submitted before the Patna high court in an ongoing PIL for a four-lane road on the land, railways coughs up Rs6.07 lakh monthly on maintenance of the track while earns Rs7,800 only per month. Only 47 tickets are sold daily and at least Rs72 lakh is spent by railways on this track annually.
The transfer of land had hit a roadblock after the state government recently conducted a survey on the high court’s order and estimated the piece of land to be worth Rs221 crore while railways, in an earlier survey, had fixed Rs896.29 crore as its price. Records submitted in the HC indicate that railway officials were ready to transfer the land, but not before payment of the price evaluated by them.
However, state government said the land being a long strip can neither be used for commercial nor residential purposes.
Modi said if the road comes up on the said strip of land in near future, the distance between Digha and R-Block would come down by almost two kilometres. He said commuters would save lots of time and residents of Serpentine Road, Boring Canal Road, Shivpuri, Rajeev Nagar and some other localities would avail easy transportation to Digha and R-Block. He said once this road is built, pressure on Bailey Road would also decrease.