Railways virtually assured itself a berth in the quarter-final league when they thrashed Bihar 3-0 in a Cluster 3 league encounter in the Santosh Trophy National Football Championship in Delhi on Saturday.

Railways, who won their opening league encounter against Uttaranchal by an identical margin, now have six points from two outings while the latter have three.

Railways need to only draw their next game against Chandigarh on Monday to advance to the quarter-finals.

In other matches of the day, Uttaranchal scraped past Chandigarh 1-0; Uttar Pradesh drubbed

Jharkhand 3-0; Maharashtra was given a walkover following the absence of Arunachal Pradesh in Cluster 4; Nagaland were held to a goalless draw by Jammu and Kashmir in Cluster 8 and Andhra Pradesh beat Mizoram 2-0 in Cluster 1.

Railways, who boasts of strikers like Asim Biswas and Khasif Jamal in their ranks, dominated the match for the entire 90-minute period as Bihar could not manage a single attack.

On the other hand, Railways were always knocking on Bihar's goal with Jamal drawing first blood in the 30th minute when he rose above the defenders to head home a cross from Poly Cherian before Gourav Dutta (48th) and Subhashish Roy Choudhary (83rd) beat the Bihar custodian through solo efforts to seal the fate of the match.

In contrast the other match from the cluster between Uttaranchal and Chandigarh was an error-prone affair with none of the teams coming up with any good moves.

Uttaranchal skipper Sunil Chaudhary found the winner in the 52nd minute when he pounced on a free ball outside the opponent's box and unleashed a left-footer which beat goalkeeper Mukesh Kumar.

In the match between Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand, the former gave a clinical performance to thrash their hapless opponents and take their points tally to six. Karan Singh (29th), Ramesh Rawat (52nd) and Samsir Raza (58th) scored for the winners.

Uttar Pradesh now tops the cluster ahead of Maharashtra, who have the same number of points, on a better goal average and could make it to the next round even if they draw their final league encounter against the former champions on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Andhra Pradesh kicked off its campaign on a winning note, beating Mizoram at the Chattrasal stadium thanks to goals by Syed Hussain (3rd) and Mohammad Aseem (62nd). West

Bengal is the third team in the cluster.

Results:

Chattrasal stadium:

Cluster 1: Andhra Pradesh 2 (Syed Hussain 3rd min; Mohammad Aseem 62) beat Mizoram 0.

Cluster 8: Jammu and Kashmir 0 drew Mizoram 0.

Thyagraj stadium:

Cluster 3: Railways 3 (Kasif Jamal 30; Gourav Dutta 48; Subhasish Roy 83) beat Bihar 0; Uttaranchal 1 (Sunil Chaudhary 52) beat Chandigarh 0.

Ambedkar stadium:

Cluster 4: Uttar Pradesh 3 (Karan Singh 29; Ramesh Rawat 52; Samsir Raza 58) beat Jharkhand 0; Maharashtra walk-over Arunachal Pradesh.