Tuki seeks compensation for Railway project-affected people

Itanagar, May 21 (UNI) Arunachal Pradesh PWD and Urban Development Minister Nabam Tuki has urged the officials of the Northeast Frontier Railways (NFR) to pay adequate compensation to the families affected by the railway project.

Official sources said here today that the Minister asked the NFR to compensate the families and departments for acquiring agriculture and housing land, besides private buildings and government assets, while laying railway lines from Harmutty to Naharlagun.

Speaking at the first meeting of the committee, constituted by the state government under Mr Tuki's chairmanship for monitoring the progress of land acquisition for the proposed railway line, the Minister suggested that the tender for the civil work should be in 'package system' to accommodate the local contractors.

The committee also urged the NFR to construct road-cum-rail bridges over Dikrong and Pachin rivers.

In view of the scarce land at Doimukh, a halt station instead of a station yard was also proposed, which would require only 20 per cent of the original area proposed for the station yard.

Additional Executive Engineer of NFR D Bordoloi, while participating in the discussion, informed that Road Over Bridge (ROB) would be constructed at road crossings instead of at the conventional level crossings.

The committee decided that while it would give sympathetic hearing to the affected people, no claim or complaint from any person or committee whose land did not fall in the proposed line would be entertained.

A sub-committee under the Papum Pare Deputy Commissioner had been constituted to assess the value of the land, private buildings and government assets, the sources informed.

NFR Guwahati's Chief Engineer would visit Itanagar in the last part of this month to interact with the state government and get first-hand information about the ongoing work, the sources disclosed, adding that the NFR had asked the state government to hand over the land by September this year so as to complete the project by 2011.

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