Kolkata: PWD seeks railway help for Majerhat nod

KOLKATA: The state public works department (PWD), implementing the Majerhat road overbridge (ROB) reconstruction project, on Wednesday submitted a host of documents to Eastern Railways (ER) that will be sent to the Commissioner of Railway Safety (CRS).
PWD officials on Thursday told TOI that Railways has passed on the documents to CRS, which in a letter to ER on January 13, refused approval for building the Majerhat ROB’s superstructure, pointing out 31 procedural and technical lapses. PWD is trying to fix some of these issues. The state agency has sought help from the Railways so that some of the objections can be ‘overlooked’.

The CRS, under the ministry of civil aviation, gives safety clearance to any railway project across the country. The PWD needs its nod to start building the superstructure by launching girders over the railway tracks.
A span of the ROB, which comes within the ambit of Eastern Railway (ER), collapsed on September 4, 2018. The new bridge, being built since January last year, has already missed two deadlines. The Bengal government has held Railways responsible for the delay. On November 25 last year, CM Mamata Banerjee wrote to railway minister Piyush Goyal seeking his intervention to expedite ER’s nods for building the bridge’s superstructure over the tracks and in getting the CRS sanction. But now, the crucial CRS approval is pending with the civil aviation ministry. Railways merely acts as a messenger between the state government and the CRS, which won’t give its go-ahead unless all its objections have been taken care of.
A PWD official said, “ER is supposed to submit the documents provided by us to CRS with the plea that if all the issues raised by CRS need to be addressed now, then the bridge’s commissioning will be delayed further. The bridge was supposed to be completed by September 27, last year.”