The Railway Board has observed that the progress of Road Over Bridge (ROB) and Road Under Bridge (RUB) projects assigned to Gati Shakti Units is not “satisfactory” and has directed that no new work under these categories will be assigned to these entities, adding that even the existing assignments allocated to them should be “critically reviewed”.
The Ministry of Railways has set up a multi-disciplinary Gati Shakti Directorate in the Railway Board, and for the division levels, it has Gati Shakti Units. There are 68 divisions and all have functional units. The aim of these units was to help in expeditious sanction of projects, monitoring of execution of works, and coordination with other ministries/state governments.
Among the tasks Divisional Gati Shakti Units were responsible for were the planning and execution of works of Road Under Bridges and Road Over Bridges.
‘Need to speed up work’
In a letter issued last week, the Railway Board said that it had approved the setting up of Gati Shakti Units to fast-track the construction works required to remove bottlenecks in operations and improve mobility but it observed that road bridge work assigned to these units is not “satisfactory”.
“It is observed that the progress of works assigned to GSUs has not been satisfactory under Road Safety Work- ROB/RUB works, specially where land acquisition is involved. Such works are large in numbers and scattered all over the division… In order to speed up the work… it is hereby decided that no fresh works should be assigned to GSUs,” the order reads.
The board has said that the newly sanctioned ROB projects should be assigned to the concerned Chief Administrative Officer/(Construction) or PSUs of Railways and state government as per the procedure.
Existing works of road safety assigned to Gati Shakti Units “may also be critically reviewed and assigned to other agencies without affecting adversely, the targets fixed for the current year”.
The order, however, said that the initiation of proposals for sanctioning new works related to road safety will be continued with these units.
Gati Shakti Units
Each Gati Shakti Unit has members from various departments and it acts as a nodal agency.
These units are responsible for planning and execution of station redevelopment, signal and telecommunication, all siding works and deposit work, provision of escalators and lifts, road safety and level crossing, Road Under Bridge (RUB) and Road Over Bridge (ROB), and other passenger amenities or traffic facilities.
With these units, the DRM has more administrative powers and can sanction plans that were earlier to be approved by the board, including cancelling and diverting trains if needed.
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