Hyderabad: An expert committee report on the issue has not supported the creation of a new zone as the East Coast Railway zone headquartered at Bhubaneswar is unwilling to part with the Visakhapatnam Railway division, which is the top revenue generating division. However, being a political decision, it is being pushed forward and currently all political talks are hinting at Visakhapatnam being the preferred choice of headquarters.

The strong political need for a new zone was felt for providing a rail link in the bifurcated states. Also the fact that every zone is informally identifiable with a state, had heightened the need of the new zone. The existing South Central Railway has 6,000 km route length.

According to the expert committee, as Visakhapatnam is the big revenue generating division due to port connectivity and a slew of projects in the offing, the East Coast Railway does not want to give it away. “It will adversely affect the East Coast Railway zone if Visakhapatnam is taken away from it,” as per the committee report.

“The new zone is expected to see port-oriented growth as it will have the benefit of four existing ports and two more in the process.

Meanwhile, the service contract of railway employees mandates that they should shift to wherever they are posted within their appointed zone. But with the zone being split into two, the employees now have to shift as per the requirements of the new zone. Employees say that they should be consulted before deciding on headquarters.

“Since the division of the zone is likely to affect half of the workforce in the South Central Zone, each person should be given a choice. It will be better if the administrative office is separated and operated from Hyderabad itself as it’s the administrative staff which is required to run the new zone,” said Subaiah Rao, an administrative officer with SCR.
In fact, on several occasions in the past, GM of SCR P. Srivastava too has pointed out that the division of the zone is unnecessary and it will be an administrative hurdle.

“As Vijayawada and Guntur are both major junctions and have all supporting infrastructure, they were short-listed for the headquarters of the new zone earlier, but now it looks like Vizag is the choice. The increased connectivity of Vijayawada with other places can improve the development of ports,” said Ratnakar Reddy, a member of the East Godavari District and Cocanada Town Passengers Association.