Rly allocates Rs 60 cr for infra at Chheharta railway station

Neeraj Bagga

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, January 23

The Railways has allocated Rs 60 crore to raise infrastructure at Chheharta railway station to develop it into a satellite railway station to decongest Amritsar railway station.

Already, Chheharta railway station is being used to load and unload merchandise which earns it a monthly revenue of Rs 9 crore.

The Railways plans to develop two satellite railway stations. The other one is Bhagtanwala railway station for which no allocation has been made so far.

First, Chheharta railway station, which is about 4 km from Amritsar railway station, is expected to be operational in the first financial quarter of the next year.

Railway officials said as per the blue print of the Chheharta station, its administrative building will be demolished to be replaced with a new railway line and platforms. The administrative building will be re-constructed in the backspace. In addition, two new washing lines would also be laid and upgradation in its infrastructure would also be carried out.

Presently, a majority of the operation is confined to goods trains at Chheharta railway station. Solitary passenger train Amritsar-Chheharta-Attari and Attari-Chheharta-Amritsar straddles in the morning and the evening.

Railway officials stated they were facing a severe space crunch for the trains at the local railway station where it there are six platforms to handle pressure of over 130 trains daily. These trains arrive and depart, thereby putting pressure on the limited infrastructure at the station.

Over the years, it has become a common complaint of the majority of passengers that their trains are unnecessarily halted at unscheduled stoppages at nearby stations or close to the local railway station. Many passengers, especially daily ones, regret that the majority of trains are stopped outside the city, awaiting clearance for a platform at the railway station.

Even as the number of trains and passengers have swelled since the setting up of the Amritsar railway station, it has been waiting to add new platforms for the past several decades.

Addition of more platforms being mired in technical non-approval, the Railways decided to develop satellite railway stations in March 2015.

On the other hand, railway officials cite paucity of platforms on the railway station as the prime reason behind holding back trains. They reason that after passengers alight at the local railway station, these could move to Chheharta railway station while making space for another waiting train to park there.