New Delhi, April 1 Two women members of Parliament raised railway connectivity demands in the Rajya Sabha during Zero Hour on Wednesday, seeking a stop for the Neelanchal Express at a station in Uttar Pradesh's Jaunpur district and the expansion of rail infrastructure in Chhattisgarh's tribal areas.
BJP MP from Uttar Pradesh, Seema Dwivedi, urged the government to halt the Neelanchal Express (Train No. 12875-12876), which runs between Puri and Anand Vihar Terminal, at the Mughra-Bashapur railway station for two minutes, saying that thousands of migrant workers from Jaunpur district had been demanding this stop for 40 years.
Dwivedi said that workers from Jaunpur are employed across Odisha, West Bengal, Jharkhand, and Bihar, with families now in their fifth and sixth generations in these states. She added that they were forced to disembark at Varanasi or Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya station and continue their journey on local trains to reach their villages.
"This train passes through Jaunpur district, but unfortunately, it does not stop at any railway station in Jaunpur district," she said.
Congress MP from Chhattisgarh, Phulo Devi Netam, urged the government to expedite the construction of a new rail line linking Pendra Road, Amarkantak, Dindori, Mandla, Ghansor, Lakhnadon, Gotegaon, and Sridham, saying it would boost religious tourism and drive regional development in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.
Netam also demanded the inclusion of Bilaspur in the CTCE Plan 2030, the extension of the Raipur-Secunderabad and Nagpur-Mumbai routes to Bilaspur, and the early launch of the Korba-Bikaner Express and the Korba-New Delhi rail service.
She sought to integrate the proposed rail line with the ITRC junction, similar to the connectivity already available to Delhi and Mumbai.