Bhubaneswar, April 4 Ten opposition parties in Odisha, including the BJD and Congress, strongly opposed the Railway Board's decision to transfer the Palasa-Ichhapuram section from East Coast Railway (ECoR) to South Coast Railway (SCoR) and termed it as "anti-Odisha and unjust".
The BJD, Congress, CPI, CPI(M), CPI(ML) Liberation, Forward Bloc, NCP, RJD, Samata Kranti Dal, and Samajwadi Party, at a meeting here, resolved that they will jointly stage a protest before the East Coast Railway Zone headquarters here and demand a reversal of the decision.
The meeting strongly condemned the Railway Board's decision to transfer the Palasa-Ichhapura section to South Coast Railway from the East Coast Railway headquartered in Bhubaneswar and called it "anti-Odisha, unjust, and unacceptable".
The Palasa–Ichchapuram section is currently under the administration of the Khurda Road division within the East Coast Railway (ECoR), and the Railway Board decided to merge the stretch with the newly formed South Coast Railway (SCoR) zone.
The opposition parties said that transferring the Palasa-Ichhapuram (about 50 km) railway section from the Khurdha Road Division of the East Coast Railway to the Visakhapatnam Division of the South Coast Railway will impact revenue generation for the state.
"The transfer of about 50 km from ECoR will result in a reduction in the size of the East Coast Railway and a decrease in revenue," said CPI (M) state secretary Suresh Panigrahy. He said that ECoR is the highest railway revenue-earning zone in the country.
The BJP-led NDA government's plan to regionalize the Indian Railways is "condemnable", they said.
They alleged that the Centre was "weakening" Odisha by transferring the vital section from ECoR to SCoR.
The "double engine" BJP government at the Centre and the state is ignoring the legitimate rights of Odisha and is working against the interests of the state, they said.
The CPI(M) state secretary said that if Palasa-Icchapuram is shifted to Andhra Pradesh-based SCoR, the Centre must transfer railway divisions of Sundergarh, Balasore, Mayurbhanj, Keonjhar and Jharsuguda districts of Odisha from the South-Eastern and South-Eastern-Central Railways to the East Coast Railway Zone.
Meanwhile, a section of BJP leaders, including some MLAs and one MP, have also openly opposed the decision to hand over around 50 km of railway track of ECoR to SCoR.
BJP's Berhampur MP Pradeep Kumar Panigrahy, party MLAs - K Anik Kumar (Berhampur), Manoranjan Dyansamantra (Chikiti) and Purna Chandra Sethy (Khalikote), have also publicly expressed their displeasure over the decision of the Railway Board.
The Odisha government, in a statement said, "It is clarified that the Palasa–Ichchapuram section does not host any major originating freight revenue station, and therefore, there will be no adverse impact on the revenue of East Coast Railway due to administrative restructuring."