Leading infrastructure companies, rail vehicle and equipment manufacturers, and service industry firms are learnt to have evinced interest in running private trains on the rail network.
Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Ltd. (IRCTC) and Bharat Earth Movers Ltd (BEML), mining and construction equipment manufacturer under the Ministry of Defence, have also shown interest.
Hyundai, Hitachi, Bombardier, Alstom, and Siemens are among the infrastructure majors keen to compete with Indian companies such as Adani Ports, KEC International, and Essel Group in the Request for Qualifications (RFQ) invited by Railways for passenger train services on over 100 routes with 150 modern trains.
The IRCTC, which has created a brand in tourism and catering, is behind the country’s first three private trains operating on Delhi-Lucknow, Ahmedabad-Mumbai, and Indore-Varanasi corridors.
According to a road map worked out by Railways, the train sets have to be brought by private operators and maintained by them. Fares will be competitive and passengers can look forward to world-class service. The selected entity will pay fixed haulage charges, energy charges as per actual consumption, and a share in gross revenue to Railways.
The private trains will operate in 12 clusters, including Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Delhi, Mumbai, Patna, Prayagraj, Secunderabad, Howrah, and Chennai. In the Chennai cluster, three trains from Kerala figure among the trains to be handed over to private players. The trains identified are the Chennai-Mangaluru weekly service, Ernakulam-Kanyakumari daily service, and Kochuveli-Guwahati thrice-a-week service.
The private entities will be selected through a two-stage competitive bidding process comprising RFQ and Request for Proposal (RFP). The RFQ process for pre-qualification and shortlisting of bidders will be based on their financial capacity. Bidders will have to pay a share of the gross revenue at the RFP stage for undertaking the project. The financial bids are expected by March and finalisation by April 2021 and the RFQ will be done by September.