Tori – Balumath Rail Line & Balumath-CCL siding dedicated to the nation

Tori – Balumath Rail Line & Balumath-CCL siding dedicated to the nation

Minister of State of Railways & Communications, Shri Manoj Sinha today dedicated to the nation the Tori-Balumath rail line and Balumath-CCL Siding. Flagging off the train through Virtual Conferencing from Rail Bhavan today, Shri Manoj Sinha said “need for streamlining transportation of nearly 170 million tonnes/per day of Coal had been felt for long from Jharkhand’s Latihar region. Since 2005-06, the Tori-Shivpuri 44 km new railway line had been approved. Till 2013-14 the progress was quite slow and only Rs. 145 Crore could be spent. Subsequent to its inclusion in Hon’ble Prime Minister’s PRAGATI portal, the project work was fast-tracked and as a result, 19.3 km Tori-Balumath section has been completed with an expenditure of about Rs. 1063 Crore. The revised sanctioned cost of this project is 1589 crore rupees. Out of this stretch today the 19.3 km run from Tori to Balumuth has been commissioned  due to the sincere commitment of Ministry of Railways and Jharkhand Government”.

The Tori-Shivpur new line (44.0 Km) is being constructed primarily for coal evacuation from Amrapali and Magadh coal mines of Latehar and Chatra districts of Jharkhand. This area has huge coal deposit. Between Tori to Balumath there are 3 stations, 5 major bridges, 7 ROBs and 39 minor bridges. As per initial estimate, CIL proposed to evacuate total  80 rakes  of coal daily work from various coal blocks. Two sidings are being developed by CIL to connect Amrapali and Magadh coal mines to rail net work. 

Speaking on the occasion, the Minister congratulated the officers of the East Central Railway and particularly the engineers of the construction wing who helped complete the construction despite challengers of the difficult geographical terrain. The Tori-Shivpur rail line project is funded by Central Coalfields Limited (CCL) - a coal producing subsidiary of Coal India Limited (CIL).

Commissioning of Tori-Balumath rail line and Balumath-CCL Siding will help to evacuate 5 to 6 rakes of coal everyday in first phase which will result in annual offtake of 6-7 million tonne (MT). On completion of the complete stretch Tori-Shivpur-Kathotia rail line, around 100 MT of coal will be evacuated annually from North Karanpura Coalfield of Jharkhand.

CCL, with active support from central & state governments, has commissioned many long pending projects in the last 4 years. This includes two mega coal mining projects viz. Magadh OCP and Amrapali OCP.

Source:PIBNEWS