China rail: RS panel raises concern

Pioneer News Service

A Rajya Sabha panel has expressed concern over China bringing railway line to almost Indian borders and has suggested the Defence Ministry to immediately bring to the notice of the Prime Minister the urgency to build a corpus for laying railway network in bordering areas.

It also urged upon the Government to draw up a time-bound plan to execute and implement the strategically important projects in coordination with stakeholders in a “time-bound manner”.

The panel headed by former Uttarakhand Chief Minister Bhagat Singh Koshiyari felt India had to cut a sorry figure in the 1962 war with China for want of adequate infrastructure in border areas.

China has completed its 3,900 km Beijing Lhasa rail link and is pushing ahead with several other rail road projects adjoining the Indian border. China proposes to build 5,000 km of rail link with emphasis on establishing connectivity to Tibetan Autonomous Region.

China is also considering an extension of the Golmu-Lhasa line up to Xigaze, south of Lhasa and from there to Yatung, a trading centre barely a few kilometres from Nathula, a mountain pass that connects Tibet with Sikkim.

Also there is a proposal to extend the line to Nyingchi, an important trading town north of Arunachal Pradesh at the trijunction with Myanmar. These rail lines will bring Chinese trains up to Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh — two Indian States that figure prominently on the radar of Sino-Indian dispute. It has also proposed to build rail network in Nepal.

“It is a matter of great concern that China has almost encircled Indian border areas through railway and road network. The issues is of great significance in view of the fact that China has grown exponentially in both the economic and the defence areas and (Indian) Government needs to be extremely cautious on both these counts,” a report by the panel has said.

India’s rail network is World’s most extensive but it does not penetrate the border states of J&K, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh.

In their petition to the committee in 2010, two MPs and five MLAs from Uttarakhand said, “The British left behind a track lane of 55,596 km, in 62 years since Independence the total railway track stands at 63,940 km. This work around addition of 130km in a year which is very pathetic. The situation in Himalayan States is even worse as not even a single kilometre has been added there since Independence.”

The Bhanupalli-Bilaspur-Beri; Ghanauli-Baddi; Nangal-Talwara and Bilaspur-Manali-Leh rail line in Himachal Pradesh, Rishikesh- Karnaprayag; Tanakpur-Ghat-Bageshwar; Dehradun-Kalsi; Ram Nagar-Chaukhutiya; Haridwar-Kotdwar-Ramnagar-Kathgodam; and Rishikesh-Dehradun in Uttarakhand, Hirumati-Itanagar; and Rupai-Parasuramkund in Arunachal Pradesh, Jammu-Rajauri-Poonch in J&K, Mirik-Gangtok and extension of Sevoke-Rangpu line up to Gangtok in Sikkim are in different phases. Paucity of fund, problem with land acquisition and bureaucratic hurdles have led to delays in their execution.

The Committee deliberated at length on the issue of funding by the State Government and the resultant cost escalation due to delays in allocation of resources by the State Government. The Committee felt that the only way out is to declare these projects as ‘National Projects’ or ‘strategically important projects’ with dedicated financial linkage.

The committee has also suggested the Government that instead of concentrating on all these railway lines, only those which are strategically important should be taken on priority basis.

It also suggested that problem of resource allocation could be addressed in the manner that instead of asking for one time allocation, if it was done in a phased manner then budgetary allocation could be done.