India’s first bullet train project takes off! The first tender for the Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train project has been floated by the National High-Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL) even as it seeks to overcome local resistance for land acquisition in Gujarat and Maharashtra. The first tender for the bullet train project is for the construction of a bridge in Navsari district of Gujarat, where officials of NHSRCL have been appealing residents to resolve issues related to land acquisition. The bridge will become the first of the 60-odd bridges on the high-speed corridor, which is 508 km long, according to an IE report.
According to NHSRCL officials, with this, a gradual end to the deadlock over the land acquisition process in Gujarat and Maharashtra is visible. According to sources quoted in the report, there are encouraging signs from Palghar in Maharashtra, where the NHSRCL officials have been battling resistance from farmers, who are supported by MNS and local Shiv Sena units.
In Palghar in Maharashtra, where 300 hectares of land is required, the NHSRCL has been able to rope in women of 73 villages and has given them the charge of facilitating communication between NHSRCL engineers and village heads for the joint measurement survey, the report stated. Moreover, in order to explain the compensation packages being offered and the exact land requirement, a team of 15 women from various blocks has been set up.
According to officials, with this method, the project team has been able to conduct surveys in 18 of the villages where land is required. Dhananjay Kumar, NHSRCL spokesman was quoted in the report saying that NHSRCL has been able to communicate with all the concerned individuals in the villages so that there are no misgivings or lack of understanding about the project or what NHSRCL is offering to them. He also said that NHSRCL is on schedule as per the timeline of the project. Additionally, for the NHSRCL project team, the women are also documenting the needs of the villages such as building a boundary wall around water bodies that are the source of irrigation, taking care of medical facilities etc.
So far, out of the total land requirement of around 1,400 hectares, only around 0.9 hectares of land has been acquired for the corridor. However, NHSRCL officials claimed that they would be able to stick to their timeline of starting civil work by December 2018 to January 2019. The total cost for the land acquisition of the project has been set at around Rs 10,000 crore.
