Malkangiri: The dream of having its first railway line passing through Malkangiri district has once more been rekindled with the resumption of the survey which had been conducted earlier.
The railway line will connect Malkangiri and Jeypore districts. It will be 126 kilometres in length. A total of 46 kilometres of railway track will pass through Malkangiri district.
Earlier a survey had been conducted for acquiring land for the project. During the survey it was found out that the proposed track was passing through an under-construction airstrip in Malkangiri district.
So a decision to change the direction of the track was mooted. Therefore a fresh survey of land has begun.
Malkangiri sadar tehsildar Gunanidhi Nayak, senior section engineer of East Coast Railway (Vishakhapatnam), Surya Narayan, an official of the Hyderabad-based survey company and revenue department officials carried out a survey of how much government and private land is to be acquired for the project.
They visited some of the proposed sites through which the railway line will pass. The proposed tracks will pass through 13 villages under the Sindhrimal and Malkangiri RIs circles and 625 acres of forest area.
The Revenue and Forest departments, however, are yet to start a joint survey for estimation of the trees that need to cut for the construction of the railway track.
PNN