Derailed

Even as a standalone 100-odd kilometre stretch in the Kashmir Valley—between Qazigund and Baramulla—got its first ever train last year,it is only the completion of the Katra-Qazigund section that will connect this “island” section to the rest of the country.

India had pitched the project as its answer to Tibet Rail but it would do well to remember China’s track record: it took five years and one day to complete the 1,142-km long railway track between Golmund and Lhasa before flagging off the Qinghai-Tibet railway in July 2006.

Meanwhile,from an initial cost of Rs 3,000 crore,the project cost of the Katra-Qazigund line has already touched Rs 10,000 crore and there’s still no knowing when the train will arrive.

The faultlines

The first spanner in the works came in July 2008 when then Railway Board Member (Engineering) Satish Kumar Vij ordered suspension of all works on a 70-km portion on the Katra-Qazigund section. Work on the main access roads continued. That was the first time the Railways Ministry admitted it was exploring a realignment on the route.

Vij,a 1970 batch officer of the Indian Railways Service of Engineers (IRSE),cited the poor work progress on the section,mainly resulting out of the fragile Himalayan ecology,as the reason behind the rethink. He was candid enough to admit that the ministry had rushed into the project under pressure without the required planning and hence,corrections were needed.

“The alignment crosses three major thrust zones and two fault lines at oblique angles,besides running almost along them for about 40 km length. For much of the length,the alignment runs close towards the face of the hills,crossing a series of khads that would require tall bridges and crossing ridges of the rugged mountain slopes. A number of tunnels are to be built at shallow depth and underneath water channels. Scope for landslides is large,endangering bridges. Some unstable tunnel face slopes have collapsed already. The original envisaged period of construction was over more than a year ago and progress is 10 per cent,” Vij wrote to the then Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav.

By then,the Railways had already invested Rs 750 crore on this section and had awarded contracts worth Rs 1,000 crore. The mere thought of a realignment entailed the possibility of abandoning works worth Rs 400 crore on the stretch. A possibility that was sufficient to send shivers down many a spine in Rail Bhavan,the ministry’s headquarters in New Delhi.

But even within the ministry there was talk that the Railways was willing to abandon work worth a few hundred crores since the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Line project,after being declared a “national project” in 2002,was being funded from the Consolidated Fund of India and not by the Railways Ministry. So the Ministry was assured that funding would never be a problem for this project and was not worried if money already spent went down the drain.

Seven weeks later,on September 9,2008,Vij went a step further and ordered the termination of all contracts between kilometres 30 and 52 on the section. This move put on hold the construction of the Chenab Bridge—already publicised as India’s grand attempt to construct the world’s tallest bridge at a height of 359 metre from the riverbed.

Having already pumped in close to Rs 150 crore to construct this mega-bridge,Railways had failed to show tangible results given the geological challenges thrown up by the terrain. Putting a full stop on the construction of this bridge,Vij then cleared a new location two kilometres upstream for the bridge.

But the proposed new location brought with it another realisation. Offering a higher bed level,this new location would have brought down the bridge’s height by a good 120-150 meters from the riverbed. That would have meant burying the grand plan to construct the world’s highest bridge.

The alternative plan

Chief Engineer Alok Verma,who had worked on the J&K project from 2004 to 2006,was,in fact,the first to raise the red flag over the original alignment,questioning its safety and stability. Drawing lessons from railway lines built on mountains the world over,Verma proposed several new alignments and backed the one with a gradient of 1 in 40,which means that the alignment gains a height of one metre after every 40 metres it traverses on the ground. The original alignment was being constructed on a 1 in 100 gradient. Recommending against using a “serpentine” alignment along the major geographical faultlines,Verma suggested that major faultlines should be crossed at right angles.

To back his argument,Verma came out with a detailed report. The 1-in-40 gradient would have brought down the route length from 126 km to 68 km,the number of tunnels would come down from 64 to eight while the number of bridges would come down drastically—from 94 to seven. The number of railway stations on this proposed alignment,too,would come down from 12 to seven.

Verma argued that this approach not only reduced the vulnerability of the line to landslides,it also reduced the route length significantly and would allow for running of passenger trains at faster speeds.

The bureaucratic tangle

Vij’s move to review the alignment was not well-received in Rail Bhavan corridors. Northern Railway,the nodal zonal railway in charge of the project,ignored most of his suggestions and many senior officials in the Railway Board disagreed with them. In fact,in his 16-page note to Lalu,written days before he retired,Vij mentioned the reluctance shown by rail PSUs IRCON,KRCL and “even some of my fellow Board members to even consider the proposal of change in alignment”. The then Railway Board Chairman Kalyan Coomar Jena,too,had expressed clear reservations against abandoning the original alignment in an internal communication.

Despite getting increasingly isolated,Vij,nevertheless,stood his ground. The bureaucratic machinery figured a way to deal with the uncomfortable position Vij had put the ministry in. Realising he only had a few months left for retirement,the authorities reached an off-the-record understanding that status quo would be maintained till Vij’s retirement. Vij retired from service on March 31 this year. In less than a month,Chief Engineer Alok Verma was transferred from the project. The two dissenting voices had gone.

Meanwhile,IRSE officer Rakesh Chopra succeeded Vij as Member,Engineering,in the Railway Ministry. Having worked as the Chief Administrative Officer of the J&K project a few years ago,Chopra’s elevation to the top engineering post in the Indian Railways renewed hopes that the project would be revived as per the original plan. Chopra,a respected officer in Railway circles,now finds himself dealing with the mess that the project has landed in.

The expert committee

In August 2008,a month after Vij suspended work on the Katra-Banihal section,he ordered the setting up of a high level expert committee to review the present and proposed alignments. The committee was to be headed by former member,Engineering,V.K. Agnihotri. Curiously,the decision remained on paper till December 2008. And when the committee was finally constituted in December,former Railway Board Chairman M. Ravindra had replaced Agnihotri as chairman. Further,another former member,Engineering,R.R. Jaruhar found his way into the committee.

The delay in setting up the committee,changing its chairman,and induction of another member raised several eyebrows. Mandated to “study and comment on the existing and proposed revised alignments of Katra-Qazigund section of the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link Project with a view of constructability,stability and survivability” and submit its report in 30 days,the committee took almost six months to do so.

Days before the expert committee was to submit its report,Delhi Metro Rail Corporation chief E. Sreedharan wrote a strong-worded letter to M. Ravindra. “Right from 2002 onwards,when Railways decided to take up the Rail Link to Srinagar,I was opposing the present contour alignment and had suggested that a direct route through long tunnels,cutting across fault zones should be adopted,reducing drastically the overall length. This view was also shared by the Konkan Railway Corporation. By adopting a straight alignment with long tunnels,not only can the total length of tunneling be brought down,the number of bridges can be reduced and the total haulage length also considerably reduced. This would,however,necessitate a ruling gradient of 1:40,which I do not think is formidable from operation and safety point of view if electric traction and compressed air braking are adopted,” Sreedharan wrote. 

The DMRC chief did not stop at that. He said that in the last seven years,work on the present alignment could only show a 10 per cent progress and at this rate,Sreedharan said,the project would take another 20 years,during which the cost would go up four to five times. “The resultant alignment will not be stable and the high bridges would be highly vulnerable from a security point of view,” he wrote. “If a shorter route with long tunnels is adopted,there is a chance of this project getting completed in the next 6 to 7 years,” he said. Sreedharan even mentioned that he had recommended a Special Purpose Vehicle on the lines of DMRC with 50:50 share holding pattern between the Indian Railways and J&K government to expedite this project. “The project has to be insulated from the day-to-day interference from the Northern Railway and the Railway Ministry,” he wrote.

Submitting its report in June this year,the Ravindra Committee is learnt to have accepted the Swiss consultant’s recommendation to realign 93 km out of 126 on the Katra-Banihal section. But despite doing so,it is learnt to have allowed Railways to retain Chenab Bridge,with a rider that necessary tests and studies are completed first.