BANGALORE: The railway projects waiting for the environmental clearance in the state might see the light of the day as the Railway Ministry has decided to form a special coordination committee to explore the possibility of giving clearances. The committee would comprise officials from the Railways and the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests. Sources said, Union Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi and Union Minister of State for Railways K H Muniyappa, at a meeting in New Delhi on Tuesday, decided to approach the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests to enable them to set up the coordination committee. The committee is expected to ease the process of evaluation to clear the projects in the state besides acting as a via media between the two ministries. According to Karwar MP Ananth Kumar Hegde, who participated in the meeting with the other MPs, both ministers agreed to take up the issue of obtaining clearance for Hubli-Ankola railway line on priority basis after constituting the committee. The Union railway minister would be visiting the state with Muniyappa to discuss various issues related to the ongoing railway projects including those being taken up on public private partnership (PPP) mode. It may be recalled that the Ministry of Environment and Forests has been denying clearance to Hubli-Ankola railway line from the past 40 years despite the railways and state making efforts to convince the ministry. The railways had realigned the project recently to minimise the ecological damage and had proposed to acquire 700 acres of forest land for the project instead of 900 acres as intended initially. The state offerred to undertake massive afforestation programmes to compensate for the damage.
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