Odisha: Trains detained for six hours due to rail roko agitation

Rayagada: Long distance trains were stranded for about six hours due to `rail-roko` agitation by people of the area at Therubali, about 25 km from here in Odisha`s Rayagada district on Sunday, railway sources said.

Demanding stoppage of Koraput-Rourkela and Bhawanipatna-Bhubaneswar express trains at Therubali station, a large number of people staged an agitation from 7 am to around 1 pm, station master, Rayagada, SK Nihal said. Slogan shouting demonstrators holding placards blocked the railway tracks at Therubali station under Rayagada section of East Coast Railway (ECoR) to press for their demand and did not allow any train to pass through the busy route connected to four metros - Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata. However, they called off the agitation after Rayagada sub-collector, Pramod Mishra and senior railway officials visited the spot and assured them that the matter would be taken up with railway authorities and sutaible action taken. The trains detained at different stations included Visakhapatnam-New Delhi Samata Express, Visakhapatnam-Mumbai LTT Express, Chennai-Assansol Express at Rayagada, Koraput- Howrah Samaleswari Express at Kalyansinghpur and Rayagada- Sambalpur-Puri Tapaswini Express at Muniguda, the sources said. PTI