To back his argument, Verma came out with a detailed report. The 1-in-40 gradient would have brought down the route length from 126 km to 68 km, the number of tunnels would come down from 64 to eight while the number of bridges would come down drastically—from 94 to seven. The number of railway stations on this proposed alignment, too, would come down from 12 to seven.

Verma argued that this approach not only reduced the vulnerability of the line to landslides, it also reduced the route length significantly and would allow for running of passenger trains at faster speeds.

The bureaucratic tangle

Vij’s move to review the alignment was not well-received in Rail Bhavan corridors. Northern Railway, the nodal zonal railway in charge of the project, ignored most of his suggestions and many senior officials in the Railway Board disagreed with them. In fact, in his 16-page note to Lalu, written days before he retired, Vij mentioned the reluctance shown by rail PSUs IRCON, KRCL and “even some of my fellow Board members to even consider the proposal of change in alignment”. The then Railway Board Chairman Kalyan Coomar Jena, too, had expressed clear reservations against abandoning the original alignment in an internal communication.

Despite getting increasingly isolated, Vij, nevertheless, stood his ground. The bureaucratic machinery figured a way to deal with the uncomfortable position Vij had put the ministry in. Realising he only had a few months left for retirement, the authorities reached an off-the-record understanding that status quo would be maintained till Vij’s retirement. Vij retired from service on March 31 this year. In less than a month, Chief Engineer Alok Verma was transferred from the project. The two dissenting voices had gone.

... contd.