Even as a substantial number of industrial projects in the country are in troubled waters due to land acquisition problems, the Indian Railways claims to be showing the way.
Railway minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday said that out of the 39,000 acres of land required for the dedicated freight corridors (DFCs), it has been able to provide about 40 per cent of the area from its land bank and through aligning the corridors with existing tracks. The latter exercise alone, Banerjee said, had saved the Railways about Rs 800 crore.
“Out of 39,000 acres, we acquired 12,000 acres from the Railways land bank and 2,500 acres from the alignment survey, contributed about 40 per cent of the land required for the projects. Through this, we were able to save Rs 800 crore,” she said at the inauguration of the Dankuni-end of the Eastern DFC.
In the first phase of building DFCs across the country, Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India (DFCCIL) will be constructing two corridors – the Western DFC and Eastern DFC — spanning 2800 km. The Eastern Corridor, starting from Ludhiana in Punjab will pass through Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and terminate at Dankuni, where the Railways intends on building a freight terminal. The Western Corridor will traverse the distance from Dadri to Mumbai, passing through the states of Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra.
Lobbying for additional investment into the Railways from the private sector, Banerjee said, “We want full participation from the industry. The Railways is also a part of industry. We cannot survive on just running passenger trains.”
She said that her ministry was in the process of formulating a new policy to enable the private sector to fund sections of the DFCs, in return for permission to set up industry in adjoining tracts of railway land.
Comparing the growth of the Indian railways with overall industrial growth, Banerjee said, “In the last three months, Railways grew 7.7 per cent, while the industry growth was just 4.4 per cent. This shows the pace at which we are growing.”
She, however, admitted that projects worth Rs 100,000 crore by the railways were still pending.
