Before the year 2017, the railway budget was presented separately from the general budget. But now the railway budget is presented along with the general budget. This time, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has great expectations for railway passengers. The Finance Minister himself has said that this time the budget will be different than the last 100 years.
Actually, due to the Corona crisis, the speed of the railway was also halted. In this budget, there may be an emphasis on pushing projects related to railways. The government’s focus can also be on passenger amenities. Passengers are also looking forward to cutting fares. However, in the midst of the Corona crisis, the Indian Railways has expanded its infrastructure.
Apart from this, the bullet train is an ambitious scheme of the Modi government. The plan slowed down due to the Corona epidemic. It is expected that in the budget, the government can present a further picture about the bullet train. The government can tell its plan regarding the bullet train network.
It is worth noting that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said that while presenting the budget 2020-21, the central government is working fast on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project. In December last year, the Ministry of Railways had released ‘National Rail Plan 2024’ for its long-term strategy.
It had information about increasing the railway infrastructure capacity and model share. There was also mention of preparing high-speed railway infrastructure in it. The Ministry had also said that this plan will be finalized by January 2021.
According to the proposed draft plan, by the year 2051, 8,000 km of high-speed rail networks will be built across the country. It also includes new bullet train corridors. Bullet train corridors are also proposed for Varanasi-Patna, Amritsar-Jammu and Patna-Guwahati routes.
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At present, there is only one bullet train corridor in India. It is between Mumbai and Ahmedabad and work is going on on it. Other corridors of the bullet train are also proposed between Delhi-Varanasi, Hyderabad-Bengaluru and Mumbai-Nagpur via Ayodhya.
Under the National Infrastructure Pipeline (PIP) plan, there is a plan to spend Rs 11.43 lakh crore in the railway sector by 2024-25. Based on this roadmap, it is expected to spend Rs 3.08 lakh crore in FY 2022 itself. The total capital expenditure of the railways between 2014 and 2020 has been 6 lakh crores. Capital expenditure for 2019 to 2014 was around 50 per cent.
As far as the grooming of railway stations is concerned, only the New Delhi railway station is estimated to cost Rs 6,500 crore. Apart from this, Surat, Chandigarh, Anand Vihar, Amritsar, Gwalior, Kanpur, Sabarmati stations are to be redeveloped.
