The Cabinet on Tuesday approved the doubling of Daund-Manmad railway line to ease movement of passengers and goods across Pune, Ahmednagar and Nashik in Maharashtra. The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs gave the approval at an estimated cost of Rs 2,081.27 crore and expected completion cost of Rs 2330.51 crore.
“The 247.5 km long railway line is expected to be completed in five years. Doubling of the line will greatly ease the ever increasing passenger and freight traffic on Daund-Manmad route, thereby increasing the revenue of Railways,” said Railway Minister Piyush Goyal detailing the Cabinet decisions.
“Besides passengers, industries in and around Daund- Manmad route will have additional transport capacity to meet their requirements. The districts of Pune, Ahmednagar and Nashik in Maharashtra will be benefited by this project,” he said.
At present the Railways is working on the Mumbai-Chennai route by doubling the Bhigwan-Mohol and Hotgi-Gulbarga sections. Work on a new line on the lonand-Phaltan-Baramati route in Maharashtra is also in progress.
“Once these works are completed, there will be tremendous increase in traffic over the Daund-Manmad section and existing single line will not be in a position to deal with the increased traffic,” said the statement issued by Rail Ministry, emphasising the need for doubling.
Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi also approved the Rs 1,423-crore highway project in Andhra Pradesh, part of the high density Kolkata-Chennai traffic corridor. “The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs has given its approval for development of six-laning of Narasannapeta-Ranastalam section of National Highway (NH)-16 (old NH-5) in Andhra Pradesh,” an official statement said.
The cost of the 54-km project, to be executed under the National Highways Development Project (NHDP) phase V, has been estimated at Rs 1,423 crore, including cost of land acquisition, resettlement and rehabilitation, besides other pre-construction activities. The job will be done in hybrid annuity mode.