Indian Railways on mission mode to become 'future ready'

* To deliver 58 super critical and 68 critical projects worth more than Rs 1,15,000 crore

GUWAHATI: On a mission mode to become 'future ready', the Railways is on its way to deliver 58 super critical and 68 critical projects worth more than Rs 1,15,000 crore in next few years.

Despite COVID challenges, the Indian Railways is going on rapidly to complete the projects which are vital for increasing the capacity of tracks.

29 Super Critical Projects of total length 1,044 Km costing Rs 11,588 Cr got commissioned in last 1 year.

Indian Railways identified a total of 58 Super Critical Projects of a total length of 3750 km costing Rs 39,663 crore. Out of these total 58 Super Critical Projects, 27 projects will be completed by December 2021 while the remaining two projects will be handed over by March 2022.

It may be noted that most of the traffic of Indian Railways moves on the Indian Railway network on Golden Quadrilateral, High-Density Network routes & Highly Utilized Network routes. The high density & highly utilized network routes constitute 51% route length of the Indian Railways network but carry 96% of traffic.

Based on traffic density, type of commodity moved, the importance of route from strategic considerations etc. the projects requiring urgent expansion including those which are already progressing well (expenditure already more than 60 per cent) have been categorized as Super Critical projects (58) and the projects requiring completion in next stage have been defined as Critical projects (68). All are civil projects (Includes all related electrification and signalling works also).

By focussed funding and continuous monitoring, these projects are targeted for early completion to reap the benefits of investment. On completion, these projects will improve mobility, safety and create additional capacity for running more passenger and freight trains on these saturated and busy routes. Higher priority has been given in the allocation of budget for these identified projects for early completion.

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