Bhubaneswar: Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Saturday sought Prime Minister Narendra Modi's intervention and sought two new railway divisions at Rourkela and Jajpur districts to unify the railways under one administrative zone in Odisha. Patnaik said he had come to know from media reports that Railway Minister Piyush Goyal has announced setting up of a new zone, South Coast Railway (SCoR), which will be formed by carving out part of the East Coast Railway's (ECoR's) Waltair division.

The Biju Janata Dal (BJD) chief said it had come as a "rude shock" to the people of the state. "Till such (formation of new divisions) time, I would request in the interest of the people of Odisha, not to operationalise the declared South Coast Railway zone at Visakhapatnam which has been done without consultation with Odisha," Patnaik said in a letter to Modi. Patnaik wrote the letter hours after the ruling BJD members staged a demonstration before the headquarters of the ECoR here. At present, about 70 per cent of Odisha is under the jurisdiction of the ECoR that has its headquarters in Bhubaneswar. The state has the maximum resources of almost all major minerals like coal, iron ore, bauxite and manganese ore.