Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday flagged off the first train to run on the 351-km New Bhaupur-New Khurja section (both in Uttar Pradesh) of the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (EDFC), and also inaugurated the operation control centre for the EDFC at Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, via videoconferencing.
At the inauguration event, he said that infrastructure development should be kept away from politics, while blaming the work culture of the previous government for the delays in implementation of the dedicated freight corridor project that was approved in 2006.
“Be it our farms, industries or markets, they are dependent on freight movement and Railways has always played a huge role in this,” Mr. Modi said, adding that dedicated freight corridors were needed in India as currently passenger and freight trains run on the same track and sometimes passenger trains were stopped at stations to give way to freight trains. He noted that this not only led to delay for passenger trains, but also for freight trains due to lower speeds and frequent stops, which increased the cost of freight movement.
“With these corridors, we can improve punctuality of passenger trains. In addition, freight trains can run three times faster, and will be able to transport twice the amount of freight as these tracks can run double decker trains... Since freight trains will reach on time, this will bring down the transportation costs, leading to reduction in cost of various goods,” he said.
The Prime Minister said that the delay in implementation of this much-needed project reflected the work culture of the previous government. “The project was approved in 2006, but post that all progress was on paper,” he said, pointing out that the previous government did not seriously communicate with the States, resulting in delays.
“Till 2014, not even one km of the track was laid. Even the money allotted for this was not used properly. After 2014, when the project was re-looked at, the budget increased by 11 times or by more than 45,000 crore,” Mr. Modi said.
He added that the negative impact of this political indifference towards infrastructure impacted the entire railway system. Earlier the focus was just on increasing the number of trains to get votes, but no investment was made on tracks on which they were to run, he said.
“Our past experience shows us that a country’s infrastructure development should be kept away from politics. A country's infrastructure is not the ideology of any party, but the path of development of the country. If political parties want to compete, they should compete on infra quality, speed and scale,” he said.
“I want to mention one more mentality that we often see during protests and agitations. This mentality is to hurt the country’s infrastructure and property. We should remember that this infrastructure does not belong to any politician or a party, but to the country and its citizens. While expressing our democratic rights we should not forget our responsibility towards the nation,” he said.