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Five more Railways zones announced

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI JULY 6. Ignoring protests from West Bengal over the decision to bifurcate the Eastern Railways, the Railway Minister, Nitish Kumar, has gone ahead and notified the creation of five more zones and eight new divisions.

Last month, Mr. Kumar had issued orders for the creation of two zones — East Central (headquarters at Hajipur) and North Western (Jaipur). He has now notified the setting up of the rest of the five zones, which are East Coast (Bhubaneswar), North Central (Allahabad), South Western (Hubli), West Central (Jabalpur) and South East Central in Bilaspur. While the creation of six zones were announced by the erstwhile United Front Government, the earlier Vajpayee regime decided to create a South East Central zone with its headquarters in Bilaspur.

Mr. Kumar has also notified eight new divisions. These have headquarters at Rangiya (Assam), Raipur (Chhattisgarh), Ahmedabad (Gujarat), Ranchi (Jharkhand), Pune (Maharashtra), Agra (Uttar Pradesh), Nanded (Maharashtra) and Guntur (Andhra Pradesh).

The Minister's latest announcement, creating more zones and divisions, will make it virtually impossible for the Centre to roll back the bifurcation of the Eastern Railways, in case it is so inclined. The other beneficiary States such as Orissa, Jaipur and Madhya Pradesh will certainly protest if the decision is shelved. For instance, the Biju Janta Dal has been demanding the operationalisation of the East Coast Railways for the last two years.

In the case of the Eastern Railways, most political parties outside West Bengal are not opposing its bifurcation. In fact, most of them are supporting Mr. Kumar's endeavour to transfer a number of revenue-earning divisions from the ER to the zone with its headquarters in Ram Vilas Paswan's Lok Sabha constituency.

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