New Rail Division in Jammu | Six year after creation, Railways sets up panel to study feasibility

JAMMU: Almost six years after it created a new division for Jammu, the Railways on Wednesday took first practical step towards it when it established a committee to study its feasibility.

The committee, comprising senior railway officials, has been given the mandate to analyse and review afresh, the feasibility, financial implications, administrative issues, infrastructural availability for creating the new divisions and submit a report by the month-end.

If approved by the panel, Jammu will be the first rail division in Jammu and Kashmir.

Currently, Jammu is under the jurisdiction of Ferozpur division of the Northern Railway zone.

Catering to the growing demand for new divisions, railways had decided to create three new ones in February 2014.

Jammu was one of them while the other two were Gulberga in Karnataka and Silchar in Assam.

The Indian Railways' operations are currently divided in 18 zones, which are further sub-divided into divisions, each having a divisional headquarters. There are around 70 divisions presently.

While Jammu is under the jurisdiction of Ferozpur division of the Northern Railway zone, Gulbarga is in the Pallakad division of Southern Railway and Silchar is in Lumding division of Northeast Frontier zone.

While action was initiated by the Ministry of Railways and Detailed Project Reports (DPRs) for two of the three divisions viz Gulbarga and Jammu was received from the Zonal Railways concerned long back in 2016, the work remained stuck.

Now, the Railways expects some pace in this direction, as Jammu has grown multiple times in view of Shri Amarnath Yatra and Shri Mata Vaishno Devi shrin which is visited by over 85 lakh devotees every year from all parts of the country.

“New Zones and Divisions on Indian Railways are set up keeping in view various factors like size, workload, accessibility, traffic pattern and other operational/administrative requirements, consistent with the needs of economy and efficiency,” officials said.

According to an internal document of the railways, the cost of infrastructure for creating a new zone is around Rs 205 crore while creating a new division will cost the national transporter around Rs 29 crore.

These figures exclude extra costs of relating to creating or upgradation of posts, transfer, posting of staff and other such expenditures.

Being a rail division would mean more employment in the region, more development and better train services.