Land acquisition expedited in three districts

ROURKELA: After a PIL was filed in the Orissa High Court by Bimlagarh-Talcher Sangram Samiti (BTSS) on September 14 seeking expeditious  land acquisition process for Talcher-Bimlagarh broad gauge rail line in Sundargarh, Deogarh and Angul districts, the project has started moving forward. Around 693 acre private land in the three district remains to be acquired for the project while of a total 422 acre Government land, 260 acre remains to be alienated. Recently, East Coast Railway (ECoR) had dropped its plan to simultaneously start work from Sundargarh owing delay in land acquisition. Due to this, the completion target has further been extended to March 2025 from December 2022.  

The Sundargarh district administration on Friday said for a length of 39.150 km in the district, the total requirement of private land has been revised to 247.520 acre for which notification under section 19 (1) of Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act (RLCTLAR&R) -2013 was issued on September 30.   

It is learnt, notification under Section 19 (1) is a second stage process. Next comes Gram Sabha approval and finalisation of compensation before taking physical possession of private land.  In Deogarh district of total 192 acre of private land is required. Till August the process was in preliminary with phased issuance of notifications under Section 11 (I). In Angul, of total 551 acre private land, 298 acre has been acquired and the rest is in different stages of acquisition.  

BTSS president AP Biswal, who alongwith seven others had filed the PIL, said action has been taken in Angul and Deogarh districts to expedite land acquisition.  He said after 16 years of delay in land acquisition the project cost overrun may reach a whopping `3,000 crore from the initial sanctioned cost of `810.70 crore which was revised to `1,928.78 crore in 2016. Till now, 17.62 km from Talcher side has been completed. The total project length is 149.750 km.