Bangalore, Aug 29: Charging the Centre with "appeasing" Andhra Pradesh and doing "rank injustice" to Karnataka in certain issues pertaining to railway zones, Karnataka government has sought Prime Minister A B Vajpayee's intervention in redressing the grievances of the state. In a letter to Vajpayee, Karnataka minister for water resources, H K Patil, said instead of promised four divisions the new south western railway zone with headquarters at Hubli only three--Hubli, Bangalore and Mysore-- have been given with Guntakal division being retained in south central railway.
"This has been done, not for any operational convenience but just to appease Andhra Pradesh, which was averse to Guntakal going out of the purview of the SCR", it said.
This is being done, he noted in his letter, in spite of two more new divisions being created in the SCR, namely Guntur and Nanded. "I don't understand what is the justification to retain Guntakal in SCR, which gets two new divisions, while South Western Railway is made to comprise only three divisions, with no new division created for the new zone ?", Patil said.
"If the railways were under compulsion in not being able to resist the pressure from Andhra Pradesh over Guntakal, it was open for them to have created new division with Gulbarga as headquarters, to bring Karnataka areas coming under the control of three divisions of Solapur, Guntakal and Secunderabad spread over the districts of Gulbarga, Bidar, Raichur for the new zone", the letter said. Bureau Report