Government Pushing Delayed Rail Freight Corridor Project, As Deadline Nears

Government is eager to expedite the devoted rail freight hall challenge

Concerned concerning the incessant delays and value escalations in its formidable Dedicated Rail Freight Corridor challenge, the federal government has sought an inventory of all elements of the challenge which have been delayed resulting from numerous orders given by judiciary in addition to the National Green Tribunal (NGT).

The urgency on a part of the Centre has come because the commissioning goal for the challenge, which is scheduled for June 2023 is lower than a 12 months away.

In a just lately held evaluation assembly of the a lot delayed challenge, which was chaired by the Prime Minister himself, governments of Maharashtra and Gujarat have been requested to finish land acquisition course of, aid and rehabilitation work in addition to development of street over bridges as quickly as doable.

The challenge, which was envisioned by the erstwhile UPA regime 15 years again, kickstarted development solely in 2014. It entails separate corridors for motion of freight trains completely.

The freight hall challenge principally consists of two alignments, one is the 1,875 km lengthy jap devoted freight hall which is able to join Ludhiana in Punjab with Dankuni in West Bengal. The different alignment is the 1,506 km lengthy western freight hall, which is able to join Dadri in Uttar Pradesh with Mumbai's Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust.

The complete price of the challenge is Rs 95,238 crore and is being funded by the World Bank and Japan International Cooperation Agency often known as JICA.

During the assembly, Mr Narendra Modi is learnt to have requested Maharashtra authorities to accumulate and hand over round 0.27 hectares of personal land by October 15, 2021 and even requested it prioritise the challenge and full all of the given work on time.

According to extremely positioned sources, Gujarat authorities was requested to finish one street over bridge by September 30, 2021 and 14 different bridges by December 2021 by the Prime Minister.

Meanwhile the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited (DFCCIL), which is implementing the challenge, in a progress report back to the Ministry of Railways, has mentioned that its monetary progress is 71 per cent until May 2021. All contracts for each the jap and western corridors value Rs 56,952 crore have been awarded whereas contractual progress until May 2021 is Rs 40,477 crore (71 per cent).

Only 311 main bridges out of the full 540 bridges, have solely been constructed until May 2021, which suggests solely 58 per cent of them have been accomplished.

Also, simply 93 out of the full 302 street over bridges have been accomplished on each the stretches. Progress on development of street below bridges although is barely higher as 1,105 out of the 1,582 of them have been constructed until May 2021.

Most considerably although, through the present fiscal solely 131 km of tracks have been laid below the challenge.