With thousands of acres of vacant land at its disposal and lying idle, the cash-strapped Railways has come out with a novel idea to exploit it commercially to generate additional revenue besides prevent its encroachment.
The Railways has launched the innovative ‘Grow More Food’ scheme, under which it has given more than 8,500 acres of vacant land for farming purpose on license basis to railway employees working in Group ‘C’ and ‘D’ category.
“Railways has given 8,859.18 acres of land across the country under the Grow More Food scheme. It will help generate additional revenue, increase farm produce and prevent encroachment of vacant railway land,” said a senior Railway Ministry official.
“land which is not required for operational purposes in the foreseeable future is being identified by all Railways zones as vacant land. Railways has approximately 43,000 hectares of vacant land which can be exploited commercially. Besides, a web based application called land Management Module integrated with Track Management System (TMS) Railways, has been developed," the official maintained.
A pilot project of GIS mapping of railway network and land parcel has already been started in Delhi division of the Northern Railway. After its successful implementation, the exercise will be extended to the entire Indian Railway network.
There are about 930.75 hectares of railway land which is currently encroached upon including over 206 hectares of land that is under illegal occupation in Northern Railway zone alone. To outwit land encroachers, the Railways is now planning to lay new tracks on the extreme ends of existing lines. This would effectively deal with the problem of land encroachment, a politically-sensitive issue in the country.
The construction of additional railway lines will be in Assam, Jharkhand, Odisha, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
Recently, the Government announced projects worth Rs24,000 crore comprising laying of new railway lines at various sections of the country’s railway network spanning thousands of kilometres. Railways has recently undertaken digitisation of records related to vacant plots owned by it across the country.
Railways require land for laying of tracks, construction of yards, station buildings, platforms, setting up of workshops, repair and maintenance facilities and housing colonies for its staff. land is also licensed for commercial purposes.