Elevated corridors in Deepor Beel to help restart track doubling work

Staff Reporter

Guwahati: After the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) on Thursday accorded approval for five key projects in the state, including two Deepor Beel Railway Elevated Corridors, work on the doubling of railway tracks is expected to resume as concerns about elephant fatalities will be addressed in the Deepor Beel area.

With the environmental clearance for the projects now given by NBWL, the long-pending Bongaigaon-Goalpara-Guwahati railway track doubling project is expected to get a new lease of life. The railway track doubling project with a length of 176 km, which was included in budget 2015-16 with an anticipated cost of Rs 4,059.65 crore, came to a halt near Mirza following objections to the existence of elephant corridors near Deepor Beel, a Ramsar wetland site.

The occasion of the NBWL giving approval to the projects was declared a momentous one, and Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma took to social media platform X to announce, "Today marks a significant day for Assam as the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL), the apex body in India for all wildlife-related matters, has approved five very important projects for Assam. These projects are an elevated corridor near Kaziranga National Park, the Guwahati Ring Road project, including the Narengi-Kurua Bridge, the Deepar Beel Railway Elevated Corridor (13.31  ha), th Deepar Beel Elevated Railway Corridor (0.3  ha), and th Chapaguri to Amteka Assam Mala project Road up to the Bhutan border."

The Bongaigaon-Goalpara-Guwahati railway track doubling project is important for faster movement of trains to and from Guwahati, and the halt to its construction since January 2018 was considered a great setback.

An NF Railway project brief on December 31, 2023 mentions that the National Green Tribunal (NGT), East Zone, Kolkata, ordered to stop doubling works in 5 km, in between Azara and Kamakhya stations, which is the last block section of the project. The existing line and proposed double line in this stretch pass through Deepor Beel and fall partly in the Elephant Corridor, where instances of collisions with elephants have taken place in the past.

The collisions in this section led to a number of elephant fatalities, and animal rights activists had demanded diversion of the track or other measures for the protection of the jumbos.

The NFR report mentions that, though no forest land acquisition is involved, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) has ordered and directed to stop doubling works since January 2018 until the mitigation measures to avoid collisions with elephants are done. Some of the mitigation measures suggested by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun, are the diversion of the existing line and the double line on the northern periphery of Deepor Beel through a viaduct for freeing the Elephant Corridor, the report stated.

Instead of a viaduct, there will now be two elevated railway corridors in Deepor Beel involving land measuring 13.31 ha and 0.3 ha, respectively. The elevated railway corridors are expected to free the elephant corridors and work on the track doubling work to resume after the details are worked out.

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