New Delhi, Sep 1 (PTI) Days after writing to nine chief ministers on bottlenecks in their states hampering work on the dedicated freight corridor (DFC), Railway Minister Piyush Goyal on Tuesday held a meeting with officials of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat and Maharashtra regarding the project.

Goyal directed the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited (DFCCIL) management team and the states to take all possible steps to speed up the pace of works on all sections of the Western DFC (1,504 route km) and Eastern DFC (1,856 route km).

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At the review meeting, progress of each individual state was discussed in detail, and instructions were given to ensure smooth progress by resolving all hindrances, a statement from the ministry said here.

During the meeting, progress made in acquisition of land and construction of road over bridges (ROBs) in the states were discussed. The state officials were asked to expedite the process of arbitration and enforce the law in case of issues like obstruction of work, it said.

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In order to fast-track the project, it was decided to hold regular meetings with all state officials and if required, on a daily basis.

Earlier, in his letter to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Goyal had highlighted a slew of problems facing the Railways -- pending road over bridges (ROB), hindrances in physical possession of land in areas like Muzaffarnagar, Meerut and Saharanpur among others due to agitation, arbitration cases, demand for compensation and jobs by villagers, undue demand of lease rent by the Uttar Pradesh Forest Department and protests by villagers over building of ROBs in Mirzapur district.

In the letter to Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, Goyal said land acquisition in certain stretches is held up for long due to delay in disbursal of awards, pending arbitration, mutations and hindrances in possession of land which "adversely affected the Project work".

The minister has highlighted two major issues in almost all the states -- land acquisition and delay by the local governments in building land approaches and road over bridges (ROB).

In his letter to the Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, Goyal highlighted how out of the 60 ROBs that were to be constructed, 32 were to be built by the state. However, only two have been built and the progress of the other 20 are slow.

Land acquisition for the approaches for 46 out of the 60 ROBs are also pending, he said.

Similarly in states like Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Punjab, delay in land acquisition for ROBs by the state governments have delayed the project.

The DFCCIL has been tasked with developing Indian Railways' quadrilateral linking the four metropolitan cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Howrah, commonly known as the Golden Quadrilateral. The overall cost is pegged at Rs 81,459 crore.

In the first phase, the organisation is constructing the Western DFC and the Eastern DFC spanning a total length of 3,360 route km. These corridors were targeted to be completed in phases by December 2021. DFCCIL had completed a total of 500 kilometres till January.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)