Talcher-bimalagarh railway route

[Dillip707]

After independence , a lot of railway projects were undertaken by the Central Government,in order to connect the various regions of the country. The regions which were considered as potential hubs for industrial development were given the first preferance.

Such was the region of Chhota Nagpur region comprising of South Bihar (present Jharkhand), Orissa ,West Bengal and present day Chhatisgarh.
The industries that came up in the region were

1. Rourkela Steel Plant (1st Public Sector Steel Plant in the country)
2. Bhilai Nagar Steel Plant
3. Bokaro Steel Plant.
4. Heavy Engineering Corporation,Ranchi
5. Durgapur Steel Plant.

Also present in the region was Tata Iron and Steel Company or TISCO at Jamshedpur,the first private sector steel plant in the country.

As iron ore and coal were the primary needs of these industries ,railway lines were laid in between the plants and the mines of iron ores and coal like Barsuan,Dalrajhara,Jharia,Dhanbad,Kiribaru etc.

The heavy machineries manufactured in Ranchi was sent to different steel plants in the region and hence all the sites having steel plants were connected to Ranchi. Hence Rourkela was connected to Ranchi via a 170 kms. long railway route. Also Rourkela was connected to Barsuan iron mines via a 56 kms. long route.(this line extends upto Bimalagarh).

During the plan it was decided to link Rourkela to Ranchi and Talcher .While the first phase is completed and Rourkela is connected to Ranchi,Rourkela has no direct connections to Bhubaneswar and to reach Bhubaneswar one has to go via Sambalpur which is 130 kms. more. The second phase is yet to be completed with the construction of a 154 kms. long Talcher-Bimalagarh Railway route,which will prove as a boon to the people of the region. 48 years have passed but still the work is going on.

[rkladmin]

This has been a long pending task. However, since this involves central Govt's cooperation this needs to be done little diplomatically with citizens' voice for this genuine demand. We can take this issue up once the ESIC issue get some direction.