REWARI: While Gurgaon railway station awaits a long-pending facelift and Mewat district lacks a railway line altogether, Haryana did get a new railway line after 33-years with the inauguration of the Rewari-Rohtak line on Tuesday. This is expected to boost trade and industries along this rail corridor.
The new line will connect Rewari to Rohtak via Jhajjar and is expected to serve as a significant link to connect Jaipur with Chandigarh and the ports in Western India.
The last time Haryana got a railway line was the one connecting Bhiwani with Rohtak, which was laid in 1979. This new broad gauge link between Rewari and Rohtak is 81.257 km and is expected to reduce traveling distance by nearly 50 km. The cost of laying this line is estimated at Rs 602 crore, of which, half has been shared by Haryana. The rail project was sanctioned in 2004-05 with an estimated cost of Rs 476 crore on 50% coast sharing basis with that state of Haryana.
There are five stations en route, namely Gokalgarh, Palhawas, Maccharauli, Jhajjar and Dighal, covering three districts - Rewari, Jhajjar and Rohtak. The rail line will benefit the residents of 41 surrounding villages which fall in two parliamentary constituencies and eight assembly segments.
On Tuesday, a special train was flagged off from Rewari railway station by the Union minister of state for railways K J Surya Prakash Reddy and Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda in the presence of Rohtak MP Deepender Singh Hooda and state minister for power and forests Capt Ajay Yadav. Hooda said the new rail line will usher in industrial development in the region.
Hooda said during the INLD-BJP regime in 1999-2005, an amount of Rs 435.48 crore was spent in Rewari assembly area, while after 2005, when the present Congress government came into power, Rs 3,169.43 crore have been spent which, is more than seven times the expenditure made by INLD-BJP government.
Lashing out at the opposition, the younger Hooda said, "In future, there will be a clash between two political ideologies, one is of development which the present Congress government practices and the other is of vested interests, practiced by the opposition parties."
Supporting the demand of starting a Shatabdi Express between Jaipur and Chandigarh, Hooda junior said this new railway line will accelerate the pace of development. He demanded to develop railway stations of Rewari and Rohtak as Model Railway Stations like that of stations of state capitals. Another survey is being done for a line connecting Palwal with Rewari. However, skeptics said the much-needed link, connecting the southern-most district of the state, Mewat, with the rest of Haryana, is a long-pending.
"Once can look at the new railway link as an opportunity to give Rohtak, the home constituency for the CM and his son. There are already exiting links connecting Rohtak," said a political expert.
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