Slum dwellers’ fate on Rly land hangs in balance

ROURKELA: Rehabilitation of a sizeable unauthorised slum population residing on railway land across the Rourkela Smart City looks increasingly difficult as the South Eastern Railway (SER) authority refuses to budge from its stand in  not allowing development work of the State Government on its land.
According to sources, housing proposal for slum residents through Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) has been included in the slum redevelopment scheme of the Smart City Mission.

But, the difficulty lies in the fact that 80,000 to 90,000 slum dwellers live on SER land at multiple slums along  the railway tracks and the land running parallel through the Rourkela Municipal Corporation (RMC) limits. The SER has been refusing to yield ground on  its territorial jurisdiction. A few years ago, it had stopped laying of a mega drinking water pipeline project through its Railway Colony here. The SER has also virtually derailed a four-lane government project of `13 crore through the Railway Colony. The SER has denied permission to widen a patch of 1,200 meters of the four-lane and sought `110 crore including `103 crore for land premium value.

Former Congress MLA Pravat Mohapatra said the Rourkela Smart City Limited (RSCL) was responsible for executing smart city projects entwined with technical complexities with lands of SER, Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) and Forest Department overlapping with Rourkela Municipal Corporation (RMC). The MLA added that without direct intervention of the Chief Minister, vast slum population on SER land could not be rehabilitated owing to RMC’s land crisis. Former Chairman of the erstwhile Rourkela Municipality and BJP spokesperson Ramesh Bal said the SER was not cooperating in the matter and it was against the principles of Smart City Mission. “Smart City Mission is a flagship programme of the Central government and theIndian Railways is a government organ,” he added. 

The leader claimed that the rehabilitation of slum dwellers on railway land and a few other railway related issues were also brought to the notice of the Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal by Sundargarh MP and Union Tribal Affairs Minister Jual Oram. Sources said RMC has so far identified 36.85 acre of government land at Madhusudanpali slum for low-cost housing with about 2,100 beneficiaries identified in the first phase.