New Delhi, July 6
The opposition of the Trinamool Congress notwithstanding, Railway Minister Nitish Kumar today formally notified the creation of five more railway zones. Two of these will be armed out of the existing South-Eastern Railway which is currently headquartered in Kolkata.

The five new zones are East Coast Railway to be headquartered in Bhubaneswar, North-Central in Allahabad, South-Western in Hubli, West Central in Jabalpur and South-East-Central Railway in Bilaspur.

The Trinamool Congress and other parties in West Bengal have been vociferous in their opposition to the proposed bifurcation of Eastern Railway by creating new zones.

Four Left party MPs and Trinamool Congress spokesperson Sudip Bandopadhyay had walked out of a meeting of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee on Railways on the contentious issue of bifurcation of the Eastern Railway zone earlier this week.

Demanding immediate withdrawal of the notification on the bifurcation and rethinking on the issue, the MPs said the demand should not be viewed as a Bengal versus Bihar issue.