The Commissioner of Railway Safety (North Eastern Circle) Mohammad Latief Khan will inspect doubling and route electrification works between Gyanpur Road and Handia Khas railway stations on February 24,2022.
The CRS will also conduct a speed trial of the doubled and electrified section. This section is situated in the Varanasi- Prayagraj Rambag line of North Eastern Railway’s Varanasi division.
In a notification on Tuesday, Varanasi division of NER cautioned the general public,not to trespass on the newly doubled and electrified section. The CRS will be accompanied by Chief Administrative Officer / Construction, NER, Rajeev Kumar, Divisional Railway Manager, Varanasi, Ramashray Pandey, Chief Project Manager, RVNL, Vikas Chandra and other officials.
The original target date of completion of the project was March 2022. However, the Covid-19 pandemic delayed the project.The revised target date of completion is December 2024.
Implementation timeline
Doubling works on this section was completed in the following phases:-
Varanasi City- Varanasi Jn- Banaras (Manduadih)- 7 km in FY19
Banaras (Manduadih)-Hardattpur 6.15 km in FY20
Hardattpur – Kachhwa Road 21.93 km in FY20
Kachhwa Road-Katka-Madhosingh -16.02 km in FY21
Madhosingh-Gyanpur Road-13.05 km in FY21
Gyanpur Road-Handia Khas-26 km in FY22
As on date, only 37 km of doubling remains on this section; the biggest challenge being the doubling of the Ganga river bridge between Jhusi and Daraganj.
The Union Budget for FY22-23 has earmarked Rs 50 crore for re-building the bridge over the Ganga at Daraganj (bridge number 111). The revised FY21-22 budget outlay for this bridge is Rs 119.44 crore.
Project Cost
The 120-km Varanasi-Madhosingh -Prayagraj Rambag doubling and electrification project was approved in April 2015 at a cost of Rs 943.6 crore.
The anticipated cost of the project has been revised to Rs 1500 crore. The cumulative expenditure incurred on the project as per the January monthly report of the Ministry and Statistics and Programme Implementation is Rs 1013.36 crore
Varanasi-Madhosingh- Allahabad was originally a metre gauge section which was converted into broad gauge in the year 1993-94 as a un-electrified single line.
Doubling and electrification of this line will de-congest the highly over-utilised North Central Railway’s Prayagraj- Naini- Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay Jn line which runs parallel to this line on the south bank of the river Ganga.
