In major fillip to the rail and road infrastructure development, the Narendra Modi Government on Wednesday approved rail projects worth Rs21,000 crore benefitting 11 States and highways construction projects worth Rs6,500 crore across five States.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved nine projects worth about Rs21,000 crore for expansion of railway network and connectivity across the country. Chairman Railway Board AK Mital said these projects are essentially required for removing capacity constraints, reducing detention and to cater for traffic growth in future.
“The CCEA chaired by Prime Minister has given green signal to the massive line expansion programme that involves track construction of a total length of 1,937.38 km at an estimated cost of Rs20,867.24 crore,” Mital said briefing about the projects.
The nine projects include the 176 km long construction of second railway line between New Bongaigaon and Kamakhya, the 132 km long third line between Kharagpur (Nimpura) and Adityapur (Jharkhand) and 228.3 km long construction of the third line between Rajnandgaon and Nagpur in Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra.
Construction of 273.80 km long third line between Mathura and Jhansi and 152.57 km long third line between Jhansi and Bina, the 280 km long third line between Itarsi and Nagpur, the 201.04 km long third line between Ballarshah and Kazipet was also approved by CCEA.
Construction of third line between Vijaywada and Gudur, 287.68 km long third line between Vijaywada and Gudur and the 206 km long construction of fourth line between Jharsuguda and Bilaspur was also approved by the CCEA.
Besides facilitating the travel by easing the traffic bottlenecks, the approved lines would help the upcoming industries in the region and additional transport capacity to meet their requirements.
The goods trains supplying foodgrains from one region to another, various industries, mines, coal fields and power plants will have additional transport capacity through these lines resulting in more revenues to the Railways. The move is aimed at creating a capacity to carry 1.5 billion tonne of goods by 2020.
“It is a huge capacity augmentation programme aimed at decongesting the main trunk routes for faster movement of coal, minerals, steel and other commodities and introduction of more mail and express trains,” said a senior Railway Ministry official.
Third line/fourth line projects approved are on North South and East West corridors on Golden Quadrangle which is fully saturated. These lines play an important role in transportation of freight and passenger traffic from Eastern and Southern regions to Northern and Western regions and vice versa.
The Government also approved Rs 6,461-crore project for development of 1,120 km National Highways in five States - Karnataka, Odisha, Bihar, Rajasthan and West Bengal- under NHIIP programme. The work for development to two lane standards is under Phase-I of the National Highways Interconnectivity Improvement Project (NHIIP) with World Bank assistance.
The projects are already taken up for implementation and 429 km has been completed. The civil works are expected to be completed by July 2019, and maintenance works are expected to be completed by July, 2024.
“The project will ensure safe, fast and all weather movement of traffic on the proposed National Highways mostly located in backward regions thereby improving socio economic development. The proposal was initially approved for Rs 5,193 crore. The cost has increased due to higher bid prices, and increase in cost of land acquisition, resettlement and rehabilitation and other pre-construction activities,” a Road Transport Ministry statement said.