Vajpayees railway dream project hampered due land acquisition issues It has been 15 years since former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee dreamt of connecting his ancestral village Bateshwar in Agra to a railway link passing through Fatehabad and Bah towards Madhya Pradesh. After expenditures worth several crores of rupees, Vajpayees dream is stuck in limbo due to the non-acquisition of mere five hectares of land. Agra MP Ram Shanker Katheriya and his Fatehpur Sikri counterpart Babulal Chaudhary said that they were aware of the matter. The MPs said the matter of land acquisition will be raised before the Uttar Pradesh government and it will be resolved soon. Chaudhary claimed that the delay in land acquisition was due to non-cooperation of the Agra administration and the Uttar Pradesh government. The Fatehpur Sikri MP added that he was planning to seek the Prime Ministers intervention in this project whose cost was escalating rapidly despite complete environmental sanctions.` Initially, the planned cost of the project was estimated at Rs110 crore. But the cost has escalated four times due to continuous delay in land acquisition over the years, Chaudhary said. When contacted, the public relations officer of North Central Railways, Bhupinder Dhillon said locals had taken away sleepers and rails at many places. At present, the NCR public relations officer said, there are 11 spots where the railway line is stuck between Agra and Bah and five hectares of land needs to be acquired by the state government. Agra Tourist Welfare Chamber president Prahalad Agarwal demanded that instead of a two-minute halt, Bateshwar should be made a station having all passenger amenities so that it could be included in the tourist map of India. Bateshwar can become a tourist hotspot during the annual cattle fair that is held during monsoons. This cattle fair is famous across India and it can become a really good attraction for foreign as well as Indian tourists in the near future, Agarwal said. He said the Agra tour operators would eagerly watch the Railway Budget to see if the PM remembers the promise he had made of developing Bateshwar.
Posted on: Tue, 08 Jul 2014 12:20:00 +0000
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