Lohani Reviews Pending Varanasi Multimodal Works

IWAI Chairman Sushil Kumar Lohani reviewed pending Varanasi multimodal works on Friday, 28 August 2026, at the Divisional Commissioner’s auditorium, and asked officers to expedite them with mutual coordination. Divisional Commissioner S Rajalingam and District Magistrate Satyendra Kumar were present. Also in the room were the IWAI Member (Technical), the IWAI Chief Engineer, and the Director of IWAI’s Regional Office Varanasi. The District Magistrate, Chandauli, and the Project Director, NHAI Sasaram, joined on video conference.

The review sat in Varanasi. The files on the table were city and river-port files first.

Lohani’s list, as briefed from that auditorium, ran through the Multi Modal Terminal Port; the rail-connection road from Ramnagar to Jeevannathpur Railway Station; the Cruise Terminal at Front Ghat; a Centre of Excellence; and a Multi Modal Logistics Park. Pending land acquisition, land transfer and revenue-record items were taken with those works. No completion date, cost or land-hectare figure was announced.

The chairman’s instruction was to speed the pending items through mutual coordination. He placed the package in a rail-road-water multimodal frame for Purvanchal. That is the on-record line from Friday.

Rajalingam as Divisional Commissioner and Satyendra Kumar as District Magistrate are the district-side names in the auditorium. The IWAI Member (Technical), the Chief Engineer and the Varanasi regional director are the authority-side titles recorded with them. Those three IWAI posts were not issued as personal names on Friday. They are carried as designations.

Chandauli’s District Magistrate and NHAI Sasaram’s Project Director were on video, not in the hall. Their presence on VC does not shift the lead out of Varanasi. Front Ghat’s cruise terminal and the Ramnagar–Jeevannathpur rail-connection road sit with the Multi Modal Terminal as the Varanasi-side works named in the review.

Land acquisition, transfer and revenue-record pendency were flagged as items still open. They were not quantified. No hectare figure, cost or finishing month was read out. Friday produced a review and an instruction to expedite, not a commissioning calendar.

The Centre of Excellence and the Multi Modal Logistics Park sit on the same agenda as the port and the cruise terminal. They are separate heads. The briefing did not merge them into a single project name.

Front Ghat is the cruise-terminal site named. Ramnagar to Jeevannathpur Railway Station is the rail-connection road named. The Multi Modal Terminal Port is the inland-water head of the same meeting. Those Varanasi locations are why the review was held in the Commissioner’s auditorium rather than left as a paper circulation.

Lohani’s Purvanchal multimodal line — rail, road and water together — is the policy frame he attached to the pending list. Coordination between IWAI, the division, the district, and the video-linked NHAI and Chandauli officers is the method he named. Mutual coordination is his phrase, not a progress score.

Until those land files and the named terminals actually move, Friday remains a coordination order from the IWAI chair in Varanasi’s Commissioner auditorium. It is not a completion notice.