Another zone of Bilaspur was added as it had heavy workload and in view of the companytinuous long pending demand of the region It was very strongly companytended that though Railway Reforms Committee had recommended in 1984 for formation of new zones, the situation has entirely changed in view of various factors referred to above and this was admitted position inasmuch as in Parliament the Minister for Railways answered that numberstudy regarding utilisation of new zones had been companyducted and even as late as on March 1, 2002 it was stated that owing to resource crunch the proposed new zones and divisions will only gradually become operational depending on the availability of the investable resources and, therefore, numbertime frame companyld be fixed.
Thereafter, the Union Cabinet headed by Shri Deve Gowda, then Prime Minister, companysidered these proposals in their meeting held on July 12, 1996 as to formation of six new railway zones and they are North Western Railway with its headquarters at Jaipur, South Western Railway with its headquarters at Bangalore, West Central Railway with its headquarters at Jabalpur, North Central Railway with its headquarters at Allahabad, East Coast Railway with its headquarters at Bhubneswar and East Central Railway with its headquarters at Hajipur.
The petitioners also placed reliance upon the draft that has been prepared by the Member Secretary of the Committee to finalise the detailed territorial jurisdiction of new zones and stated that Though the recommendations of the Study Group were accepted by the Railways in principle, the entire issue was further examined in the Railway Board and the final proposal was made for the creation of the six new zones, four as per the Report of the Study Group and two additional zones with the objective of the development of the backward areas particularly of Orissa and Bihar.
At the time of companysidering the same, the Union Cabinet took into account the financial viability, traffic growth and the numberms of carving out a zone before deciding the creation of six new zones on July 16, 1996.
Minister of Railways in his Budget speech for the year 1996 97 announced new six zones.
On June 4 and 14, 2002 the Railway Board met and decided to operationalise North Western Railway with its headquarters at Jaipur and East Central Railway with its headquarters at Hajipur by October 1, 2002 after finalising their respective jurisdictions.
On 29th November 2001 the Minister for Railways while responding to various questions raised in Parliament clarified as follows In the year 1995 the Union Cabinet had deferred a proposal based on the recommendations of the RRC for creating 4 new Zones.
Thereafter, on September 9, 1998 the Union Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee approved the creation of a new seventh Zone with headquarters at Bilaspur.
The Railway Reforms Committee also projected the need for 15 zones by the year 2000.
However, in the year 1996, the Union Cabinet had examined and approved the proposal for creating 6 new zones.
Railway Reforms Committee proposed the addition of four new zones in phases as follows in Phase 1, East Central and North Western Railways in Phase II, North Central Railways and in Phase III, Southern Western Railways to be companysidered later.
In the meanwhile, on July 5, 2002 a writ petition was filed by Biswajit Deb, petitioner in SLP No.
The Union Cabinet, however, deferred the proposal of creating four zones and called for more material from the Ministry of Railways.
In their joint letter to the Prime Minister sent on July 12, 2002 they stated that the creation of new zones would be operational debacle, a financial disaster and an administrative blunder and from companysiderations of sound management and operational efficiency, there is a case for reduction in the number of zonal rail headquarters.
During this period Railway Board had also expressed reservations in going ahead with formation of zones mainly due to financial crunch.
The learned Attorney General referred to the companystitution of the Railway Reforms Committee on May 12, 1981 to recommend ways of enhancing the efficiency of the functioning of the Indian railways.
In December 2001 Railway Board initiated action for operationalisation of new zones.
On February 22, 1999 the Union Cabinet also decided to move the headquarters of the South Western Railway from Bangalore to Hubli.
At that time, there were nine zones in existence, namely, i Eastern Railways Calcutta , ii South Eastern Railways Calcutta , iii Central Railways Bombay , iv Western Railways Bombay , v Northern Railways Delhi , vi Southern Railways Madras , vii North Eastern Railways Gorakhpur , viii North Eastern Frontier Railways Gauhati , and ix South Central Railways Secunderabad .
Reliance was also placed on a letter addressed by six former Chairmen of the Railway Board.
Subsequently, the Government decided to form the 7th Zone with headquarters at Bilaspur.
However, there was never any intention number to proceed with the creation of any of the new Zones as companysecutive Governments the United Front and the National Democratic Alliance governments had taken a policy decision to create the new Zones.
From 1999 to 2001 the work of Zones had been progressing slowly and a debate was going on for and against the formation of new zones.
It is number companyrect to allege that there had been numberexamination of the proposal.
Further, the slow progress in this regard is attributable to a resource crunch.
As far as opinions and observations on the new Zones are companycerned, there have always been two opposing views.
