Taking a critical view of the unchecked projects announcements made by successive governments, Railway Minister D V Sadananda Gowda today said there has been a focus on sanctioning projects rather than completing them.
"In the last 30 years, as many as 676 projects were sanctioned worth Rs 1,57,883 crore. Of these, only 317 projects could be completed and 359 projects remain to be completed which will now require as much as Rs 1,82,000 crores," Gowda said while presenting the rail budget 2014-15.
"In fact, there are 4 projects that are as old as 30 years but are still not complete for one reason or another. The more projects we add, the thinner we spread our resources and longer it takes to complete them," he said.
Sounding a note of caution, Gowda said that if this trend is allowed to continue, many more thousands of crore will get spent, yielding hardly any returns.
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He further said investment in doubling and tripling to decongest the over-utilised network brings money to railways. On the other hand, construction of new lines most of the time do not even meet operational cost as there is no commensurate demand.
Railways need Rs 9 lakh crore to complete the Golden Quadrilateral network and about Rs 60,000 crore for introducing bullet trains alone.