Mamata Banerjee on Friday wrote to railway minister Piyush Goyal seeking his intervention to resolve bottlenecks in a rail freight corridor that has not progressed much in the Bengal leg despite the state government handing over 60 per cent of the land for the project.

“Strangely, the fate of the further eastward stretch from Sonnagar in Bihar to Dankuni having a distance of about 538kms is yet uncertain… In West Bengal, we have already acquired 70 per cent of the land requirement and handed over possession of about 60 per cent of land for this stretch,” the chief minister said in her letter.

The dedicated freight corridor links Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Calcutta. It has two wings, western and eastern — in which Dankuni is to be connected to Ludhiana.

The chief minister questioned the rationale behind adopting a public-private partnership (PPP) model for the final leg of the corridor between Sonnagar and Dankuni when two other stretches — between Ludhiana and Mughalsarai and Mughalsarai to Sonnagar — were built with public funding.

Sources in Nabanna said the chief minister felt adopting the PPP mode for the Dankuni-Sonnagar stretch could make it uncertain as the railways may abandon the project if no private player comes forward to invest such a huge amount.

“The chief minister is sceptical about the third phase for two reasons. First, it has direct impact on the state’s economy and second, the country did not witness major private investment in the past few years. So it is not sure whether the third stretch would attract a private investor,” said an official in Nabanna.

A section of officials said work for the other stretches under the corridor had progressed only because the states — through which the project passes — had completed land acquisition and handed over the plots to the railways.

“But states like Bengal, Jharkhand and Bihar, which are responsible for handing over land for the third stretch of the eastern corridor, have faltered in completing the acquisition process on time. That’s the reason why the progress of the stretch between Dankuni and Sonnagar has slowed down,” said an official.

According to reports, the railways require 307 hectares in Bengal to lay tracks on a 203km stretch in the Dankuni-Sonnagar leg of the project.

“The state has disbursed Rs 270 crore out of a total of Rs 580 crore required to complete the acquisition. This means they haven’t done their bit,” said the official.

The picture is no different in Bihar and Jharkhand. Sources said Bihar had so far not disbursed even half of the Rs 898 crore it had to pay the land-losers. Jharkhand has so far paid barely 70 per cent of the Rs 336-crore bill on this count.

“Until the land-losers receive compensation, the acquisition cannot be completed. So, this delay has left the Dankuni-Sonnagar stretch in trouble. No agency can start work until 80 per cent of the land is handed over,” said the official.The dedicated freight corridors, with spurs linking them to ports and mines, are expected to ramp up the freight capacity of the railways in the future, officials said.