Karnataka to provide Rs 540 crore to Railway projects this year

Bengaluru: Karnataka will provide Rs 540 crore toward its share of costs for the ongoing railway projects in the state this year, chief minister Siddaramaiah announced in the Legislative Council on Thursday.

He said the government had committed to extending assistance to rest of the projects under the 2010 cost-sharing agreement. But he had requested railway minister DV Sadananda Gowda to rework the existing pact and bring down the state's share to a third of the costs as the state faced a shortage of funds.

"This was only a suggestion from Karnataka to the railway minister. If it is not acceptable to them, then we will abide by whatever we have committed before," infrastructure development minister R Roshan Baig told ET.

The chief minister provided an elaborate reply to an issue raised by Opposition Leader KS Eshwarappa. Karnataka was currently implementing 11 projects on a partnership basis with the Railways. The government was, however, yet to give final approval to Tumkur-Davanagere and Shimoga-Harihar projects.

These two projects plus six ongoing projects required 14,000 acres of land for which the government will have to bear the cost.

The cost of the 11 projects under implementation worked out to Rs 10,951 crore, of which the state's share was Rs 5,410 crore. The state has released Rs 1,453 crore and the state's share toward the two other projects under consideration would be about Rs 1,250 crore.

These apart, the government would have to bear the balance of the revised project costs, and its share of future escalations in project costs, the CM said.

The ongoing projects, interestingly, include a railway coach factory at Yadgir in former railway minister Mallikarjuna Kharge's Lok Sabha constituency of Gulbarga.

The Railways, the CM said, had already completed Shimoga-Talaguppa, SolapurGadag, Kottur-Harihar, Kadur-Chikmagalur and Kolar-Chikkaballapur under the partnership deal which involved the state meeting half the project cost and the land required free of cost.

According to the information provided by the Ministry of Railways, Karnataka had taken up the highest number of projects under the costsharing formula.

There are eight other states - HP, Rajasthan, Jharkand, Haryana, AP, Uttarkhand, Chattisgarh, and Maharashtra. Of these, Andhra and Jharkhand have taken up seven projects and the rest between two and four projects under the cost sharing agreement, he said.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.