The proposal to establish a Railway zone in Andhra Pradesh is likely to figure in the agenda of the current session of Lok Sabha with its Secretariat allowing Srikakulam MP K. Rammohan Naidu to move a Private Member Bill (PMB) on the matter.
It was in response to a letter written by the MP to Speaker Sumitra Mahajan some time ago that the the PMB will be tabled in the Lower House. The Central government had committed to sanction a railway zone for A.P. in accordance with the A.P. Reorganisation Act (APRA) and the State had vouched for it and mooted Visakhapatnam as its headquarters but the proposal had been hanging fire as a high-level committee formed by the Ministry of Railways is yet to submit its report. The APRA mandated the Indian Railways to ‘examine establishing a new railway zone in the successor State of Andhra Pradesh within six months from the appointed day and take an expeditious decision thereon’. The suggestion that the State government had made was to form the new Railway zone by clubbing Waltair, Vijayawada, Guntur and Guntakal divisions. Waltair division is in the purview of East Coast Railway headquartered at Bhubaneswar and the other three are in Secunderabad-based South Central Railway.
