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This project was approved in 1993-1994 and since then very little progress has been made. In the 2010-11 railway budget, for the first time, there was a decent allocation of 120 crores towards this project.

Before the 2011-12 railway budget there were a lot of news that out of the allocated 120 crores 100 crores was returned due to non-utilization.

This seems to be a false news.

If one looks at the Pink Book at http://www.indianrailways.gov.in/view_section.jsp?lang=0&id=0,1,304,366,539,1056 one can note that by the end of the 2010-11 outlay this project would have spent 211.65 crores. (See below. There seems to be some typo on the total amount needed for the project.)

In last year’s Pink Book  that number till the end of 2009-10 outlay was 105.8 crores. (See above.) In other words between 2010 March and 2011 March 221.65-105.8 = 115.85 crores would be spent. This is close to the 120 crores that was allocated.

So unless I am missing something, the politicians are spreading misinformation and actually harming the cause of the Khurda Balangir line. Instead of making false claims that 100 crores was returned (and only 20 crores was spent) and blaming the state and central government, they should have stated that 115.85 of the 120 crores was spent; and now that both the state government and ECOR have shown the ability to spend almost 120 crores in the project, at least a similar amount should be allocated in this year’s budget.

Instead, for petty political gains they spread the wrong news and the aam janta who does not know the truth will think if the authorities could only spend 20 crores out of the allocated 120 crores, then its perfectly justified for the Rail budget to have only 60 crores for the project this year.

Unfortunately, we have bad politicians and many spreaders of false news and that has time and again harmed Odisha’s cause.

Having said all that, the Railway Board knew that 115.85 crores of the alloted 120 crores was going to be spent by March 2011. They should not have reduced the allocations to 60 crores for this year.

Now following are some excerpts from a report in Expressbuzz.com. It shows the misinformation being spread.

In lieu of the return of last year’s Rs.100 crore, she has sanctioned Rs.60 crore. Last year, Rs.120 crore was allocated out of which, Rs.100 crore was reportedly returned due to non-utilisation.

An earlier report, linked in a kddf posting, hopefully, gives some useful information on the land acquisition status.

… from Khurda Road to Balangir will pass through 32 bridges including the longest one over river Tel, 403 minor bridges, 11 tunnels — the longest being 1400 meters, besides 124 level crossings and 17 stations.

Land acquisition sources said land in 13 out of the 16  villages on Balangir side have been acquired. Paucity of funds has however hampered land acquisition in the remaining three villages, said Ganeswar Kanhar, Land Acquisition Officer.In 2007, compensation for 64 acres of land was given in eight villages.

Since then only six more villages could be surveyed as the proposal for land acquisition was kept pending till the first quarter of 2010. While the civil work would be taken up only after acquisition of land for the 50 km track is complete,  till now nearly 35 km is yet to be acquired. Kanhar said 36 km of civil work has been started on  Khurda side.