According to reports, State and the Centre want the Ahmednagar-Beed line to be completed by March 2019.
The one Maharashtra-specific project that city-based railway officials believe will get maximum benefits in the forthcoming railway budget is the 261 kilometre long Ahmednagar-Beed-Parli railway line project.
Both the state government and the railway ministry have pinned high hopes on the project as the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's trump card in Marathwada and Western Maharashtra, the two regions the rail line will connect.
The buzz is that the state as well as the Centre is keen that at least the Ahmednagar to Beed leg is finished by March 2019, so that it can be highlighted during the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections as well as the assembly elections later that year. The Beed-Parli stretch, according to a tentative deadline, is to be commissioned by mid-2020.
Officials told dna that construction on the entire 168 kilometre stretch between Ahmednagar and Beed has now got off the ground with various kinds of works worth Rs200 crore going on simultaneously. Apart from this tenders worth nearly Rs500 crore have been given out with the latest being a Rs180 crore work to construct three major bridges on the route advertised in leading newspapers early this week. Another five tenders are to be finalised in the coming months, said sources, for which funds would be required.
"The work on this line has been going on at great speed from July 2015 because the state and railway ministry have in-principle agreed that both would spend Rs1,413 crore each to complete the line.
Therefore, the belief among railway officials is that the Ahmednagar-Beed-Parli rail project might get more than the Rs125 crore that was allotted to it in the February 2015 budget," said a railway official. It was in June last that the state cabinet approved the corridor as a 50-50 per cent joint financed model with both the state and railways pooling equal amounts to finance the Rs2,826 crore project.
In November last year, during an interaction between railway minister Suresh Prabhu and chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, the railways had raised the issue of the state falling behind in contributing its share of money which for the financial year ending March 2016 came to Rs160 crore.
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