Rlys cost escalation

Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Lok Sabha headed by Prof K V Thomas submitted its report to the Lok Sabha on 28th April. The report has gone deep into the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Railway Line (USBRL) Project, a very prestigious but most difficult one undertaken by the Indian Railways ever since independence in 1947. The project has been distributed into several stages in view of the toughest topography of the region through which it has to pass. The PAC has found many faults and loopholes in the entire project and has come out with scathing criticism on two important counts. One is the inordinate delay which the project has suffered and still its completion is nowhere in sight. The second is of incredible cost escalation.
The PAC has focused attention on the fault of the Railways Ministry in not taking into account the cost escalation so as to devise means of arresting the same. The Committee attributes it to Ministry’s fault of non-existence of monitoring system. One of the main complaints of the PAC is that the Ministry has replied to many of the issues very casually and never tried to satisfy the Committee on various recommendations that had been made from time to time. The initial cost estimates were about 1500 crore rupees in 1994-95 which has touched whooping 20,000 crore in September 2013 and it is 300 per cent rise. The Committee demands that those responsible for such high cost escalation have to be brought to book. They have to explain why they did not take proper measures at proper time to arrest cost escalation.
Another important point raised by the Committee is of avoidable losses. It has found that losses to the tune of 3258.92 crore rupees have been incurred by the year 2012. Committee is of opinion that full and timely monitoring, considered and careful planning could have been helpful in arresting the losses. It thinks that there has been general planning failure in this mega project. Another issue that has been highlighted and is of significant importance is that  contracts have been withdrawn halfway and given to a different agency without explaining specific reasons for doing so. This has led to inordinate delay in delivery.
In final analysis, if the observations made by the Public Accounts Committee have substance in them, it is natural that the Railways Ministry has to remove the loopholes, introduce a mechanism that will arrest cost escalation, activate all nuts and bolts of the project so that it is brought to completion by the year 2017-18 as the Railways authorities claim.  We are aware of how much difficult and technically cumbersome it has been to bring railway to Kashmir. The nation is prepared to spend huge money on the project. But much time has gone by and the nation cannot wait any more beyond the stipulated date of completion of the rail project for the State of Jammu and Kashmir.
We feel rather alarmed on the observations of the PAC that the Railways Ministry is either not responding to its questions and suggestions knowingly or is taking the entire matter very casually. It is difficult for an outsider to sit on judgment nor is that our intention. But one thing that has to be mentioned that the project involved enormous public money and people have great trust in the authorities that are entrusted with the responsibility of building the wonder rail track. They want that their money should be utilized properly for the development of the infrastructure. It pains them to find that more than three thousand crore rupees are making up the unavoidable losses.

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