New Delhi, May 5
The inauguration of the Chandigarh-Morinda line is at the mercy of the Prime Minister or Railway Minister.

Northern Railway General Manager V.N.Mathur told TNS here on the sidelines of the annual meeting of General Managers of all 17 zones of the Indian Railways that the Chandigarh-Morinda line is ready and is awaiting inauguration by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh or by the Railway Minister, Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav. He said the line merits inauguration by the Prime Minister or the Railway Minister.

Mr Mathur said NR would initially run a train everyday at a speed of 100 kilometre per hour on the 45 km stretch between Morinda and Chandigarh.

Sources in NR said the total project is in two phases— Chandigarh-Morinda line and Morinda-Ludhiana line.

The NR General Manager said the project would eventually link Chandigarh with Ludhiana. It was in March end and April this year that the Commissioner of Railway Safety, North region, Mr Bhupinder Singh, inspected the section between Morinda and Mohali railway stations and the remaining section upto Chandigarh.

Mr Rajiv Saxena, Chief Public Relations Officer of NR said most of the trials on this section had been completed successfully. He said the CRS had given a certificate of fitness for running trains at 100 kmph on this line last month. The total cost of the project is Rs 275 crore.

He said the proposal on electrification of this line had also been approved. Till electrification is completed, the trains would run on diesel traction.

Mr Pawan Kumar Bansal, MP from Chandigarh, told TNS that the Railway Minister may have been busy with elections and the marriage of his daughter. ‘‘Once the Parliament session begins, I will try to approach him and see that the line is inaugurated. ’’

Talking to TNS about the progress of other projects, Mr Mathur said they were progressively doubling the 200 km Jalandhar-Pathankot section.

‘‘About 80-90 km stretch of this section has already been completed. Most of it will be done this year.’’

He said work on doubling line between Lucknow and Jhafarabad near Varanasi had also been started. Apart from this, NR is adding two coaches on Amritsar, Bhopal, Chandigarh and Lucknow Shatabdi Express trains.