Indian Railways to complete 126 projects worth Rs 115,000 cr on priority
Jun 29, 2021
New Delhi [India], June 29 : On a mission to become 'Future Ready', Indian Railways on Tuesday announced that it is on its way to deliver 58 supercritical and 68 critical projects worth more than Rs 115,000 crore in the next few years.
In a statement, Railways said that despite challenges brought in by the Covid-19 pandemic, it is going on rapidly to complete the projects which are vital for increasing the capacity of tracks.
According to a press release, 29 Super Critical Projects of total length 1,044 Km costing Rs 11,588 Cr were commissioned in last 1 year. Indian Railways have identified 58 Super Critical Projects of a total length of 3,750 km costing Rs 39,663 Crore. Out of these 58 Super Critical Projects, 27 projects will be completed by December 2021 while 2 projects will be handed over by March 2022.
It may be noted that most of the traffic of Indian Railways moves on Golden Quadrilateral, High Density Network routes and Highly Utilized Network routes. The high density and highly utilized network routes constitute 51 per cent route length of the Indian Railways network but carry 96 per cent of traffic.
"Based on traffic density, type of commodity moved, the importance of route from strategic considerations etc. the projects requiring urgent expansion including those which are already progressing well (expenditure already more than 60%) have been categorized as Super Critical projects (58 nos) and the projects requiring completion in next stage have been defined as Critical projects (68 nos). All are civil projects (Includes all related electrification and signalling works also)," the release said.
By focussed funding and continuous monitoring, these projects are targeted for early completion to reap the benefits of investment. Completion of these projects will improve mobility, safety and create additional capacity for running more passenger and freight trains on these saturated and busy routes. Higher priority has been given in the allocation of budget for these identified projects for early completion.
