In a major embarrassment for the Railway Ministry, the External Affairs Ministry has turned down its request to send a group of officers to China as part of a training programme for the High Speed Rail Technology and Operations (HSRT).
The denial of the “political clearance” sought by the Railway Ministry comes days after the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) had rebuked it for going slow in the infrastructure development of the Railways. The PMO observed that the project execution in high speed, electrification and doubling were way below the target by the end of the year 2016 and asked the Railway Board to expedite them.
The Railway Ministry had proposed the names of 40 officers for a training programme in China from April 1-15, 2017. “The matter has been considered in this Ministry and the competent authority has not agreed to the proposal. Accordingly political clearance for the above training programme is denied,” said Pradeep Rawat, Joint Secretary (East Asia), in his communication to the Railway Board Member Mohd Jamshed.
A Railway Ministry source said that ever since talk of high speed, including the Bullet Train, projects started doing the rounds when former Railway Minister lalu Prasad announced it, roughly 250 officials, both serving and retired, have gone on “study” tour to more than 30 countries for this project.
India, at present, does not have any railways classified as high-speed rail (HSR), which have operational speeds in excess of 200 km/h. The fastest one is the Gatimaan Express with a top speed of 160 km/h between Delhi and Agra.
Both the major political parties - the ruling BJP, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress-led UPA Governments — have pledged to introduce high-speed rail. It is, however, the current Modi regime that has taken a keen interest with DPRs being readied and many conferences and officers’ visits pertaining to high-speed projects to countries like Japan, Korea and China having taken place in the past one year.
Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu and Chairman Railway Board AK Mital too had visited Japan recently regarding this project after Modi approved the choice of Japan to build India’s first high-speed railway between Mumbai and Ahmedabad.
Against the backdrop of series of derailments and accidents in recent months, the PMO had a couple of months ago questioned the performance of the Railway Ministry, particularly, on the slow execution of rail infrastructure projects including the augmentation of tracks. That was the third time in two years that the PMO took to task the Railway Ministry about its performance even as it again pointed to the “congestion” issue on some of the rail sections.
“You are aware of the focus of the Government towards the development and modernisation of facilities in Railways. While reviewing the progress up to 2016, against the target of 1,500 km of doubling, only 531 km has been achieved. In electrification, against the target of 2,000 route km, only 1,210 km has been achieved by the railways,” Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister Nripendra Misra said in the January letter to Chairman Railway Board AK Mital.