MANGALURU: The Indian Railways is working towards achieving the objective of Aatmanirbhar Bharat in a big way and is developing the requisite infrastructure in an integrated manner, Railway Board chairman and CEO Vinod Kumar Yadav said in an ASSOCHAM webinar on Friday.
“Over a period of a long time, due to various reasons Indian Railways could not develop infrastructure it should have developed, that has created a serious problem,” said Yadav addressing an ASSOCHAM webinar on ‘Indian Railways Vision for Aatmanirbhar Bharat’.
Yadav said that the final draft of the national rail plan 2030 is ready and is likely to be released next month. “Vision 2024 is part of national rail plan 2030 which will be taking care of infrastructure needs which requires to be developed by 2030 to take care of traffic requirements of 2050 and it includes all the projects included in the vision 2024 document.”
He stated, that the difference between Indian Railways and that in other parts of the world is that they have designed their networks in a manner that as soon as the traffic density reaches 90 per cent they are able to provide another track i.e. third line, fourth line etc. and they do planning in such a way that traffic density never goes past 100.
“We are carrying 130-140 MT, this has created further problems that we do not find sufficient time to maintain the asset, that creates the problem of safety and other issues,” said Mr Yadav. “For last two-three years we have been working on it in an integrated manner.”
In the passenger segment, he said the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project which is being implemented with the help of Japanese government was getting delayed due to land acquisition. In Gujarat, 90 per cent land has already been acquired and remaining 10 per cent will also be available by the end of December 31.
He explained that the Rs 32,000 crore tender for 325 km high-speed rail network has been awarded by Indian Railways.
About Indian Railways' big achievement, he said, “After a very detailed discussion with Japanese government, we have made 72 per cent of the entire contract value open to Indian contractors which includes all the civil engineering work including bridges, under-sea tunnel related contracts, whereas contracts for Japanese contractors are only limited to signal and telecom, initial rolling stock and electrical works.”
He further said, “Railway is going to achieve this objective of Aatmanirbhar Bharat in a big way and the most important thing is that Railway is developing infrastructure in an integrated manner in such a way that we will be able to take care of traffic requirements till 2050.”
Noting that Indian Railways has done a lot of work towards ensuring safety including modernisation of signalling system, mechanised maintenance of assets in last two-three years, he said, “During the pandemic period, we took advantage of the adverse situation and converted into an opportunity as we carried out 200 very important safety works including maintenance of tracks which were pending for 5-6 years.”
Yadav also said that there has been a paradigm shift in the last 3-4 months in the way in which business development activities and marketing initiatives have been undertaken. “Our portal for business development which is under development and by mid of December we are going to provide online facilities like tariff calculation, tracking consignment and others.”
He also said that Indian Railways is doing a lot of tunnelling work. There are three projects going on - Jammu-Udhampur where the last stretch is going on, then Chardham connectivity in Uttarakhand, and one project in northeast states.
Vineet Agarwal, senior vice-president, ASSOCHAM stressed upon the need to look for ways to make Indian Railways part of global supply chains.
Vivek Lohia, chairman, ASSOCHAM National Council on Railways said, “While Indian Railways has the fifth largest rail network in the world, there still remains a vast scope for growth.”
Lauding the government’s efforts, Deepak Sood, secretary general, ASSOCHAM said that Indian Railways’ ongoing projects will help in infrastructure development, push economic growth and generate lots of jobs.