Indian Railways has planned an ambitious Rs 13.68 trillion capital investment towards station redevelopment projects over a five-year period
Tenders for redevelopment of New Delhi railway station in the capital city and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus in Mumbai are reportedly expected within two weeks.
The projects may see investment of over Rs 6,642 crore – Rs 5,000 crore for New Delhi and Rs 1,642 crore for CSMT, as per a report by Business Standard.
“The proposals are under consideration of the Ministry of Finance’s Public-Private Partnership Appraisal Committee (PPPAC) and tenders will be invited within 10 to 15 days. Finalisation of the tenders is targeting within two months’ time,” VK Yadav, Railway Board Chairman said as per the report.
These redeveloped stations will have airport-like user charges for passengers and visitors, which will serve as a revenue stream. Both handle huge daily loads – close to 1,300 local and long-distance trains, plus over a million passengers at CSMT; and 200,000 passengers at New Delhi.
The development comes as nine companies, including Anchorage Infrastructure Investments Holdings, Cube Construction Engineering, GR Infraprojects, GMR Business and Consultancy, ISQ Asia Infrastructure Investments, JKB Infrastructure, Kalpataru Power Transmission, Kalyan Toll Infrastructure and Monte Carlo, were shortlisted to redevelop Amritsar, Gwalior, Sabarmati and Nagpur stations on PPP basis.
The Indian Railways (IR) has planned an ambitious Rs 13.68 trillion capital investment towards station redevelopment projects over a five-year period. This also includes the New Delhi and CSMT redevelopments and another Rs 1 trillion set aside for redevelopment of 400 railway stations, as per the report.
"The major projects lined up include the commissioning of the dedicated freight corridor by December 2021, upgrading of high-density networks (HDN) to 130 kilo meter per hour (kmph) by March 2023, doubling and electrification of all HDN and highly utilised networks (HUN) by March 2024 and further upgrading all HDN routes to 160 kmph capacity by March 2025," Yadav added.