Ongoing Railway Projects in Hilly Regions

Railway Projects are sanctioned Zonal Railway-wise not Region-wise / State-wise as Indian Railways’ network spans across various State boundaries. Railway projects are sanctioned / taken up on the basis of remunerativeness, last mile connectivity, missing links and alternate routes, augmentation of congested / saturated lines, socio-economic considerations etc. depending upon throwforward of ongoing projects and overall availability of funds.

However, as on 01.04.2020, 19 projects (13 New Lines and 6 Doubling) costing Rs. 75,795 crore for 2,008 km length falling fully / partly in Assam and North Eastern Region are under different stage of planning/ approval/ execution. These include:

1. 13 New line projects of total length 1178 km costing Rs. 57,774 crore, out of which 253 km length has been commissioned and an expenditure of Rs. 20,157 crore have been incurred upto March, 2020.
2. 06 Doubling Projects of total length 830 km, costing Rs. 18,021 crore, out of which 9 km doubling has been commissioned and an expenditure of Rs. 1861 crore has been incurred upto March, 2020.

Indian Railways is focusing on expediting the Railway infrastructure in north-eastern frontier hilly region.

04 Railway Projects (03 New lines and 01 Doubling) of total length 23 km costing Rs. 18,901 crore falling fully / partly in the State of Uttarakhand are under different stage of planning/ approval/ execution. These include:

1. 03 New line projects of total length 216 km costing Rs. 18,554 crore, out of which 6 km length has been commissioned and an expenditure of Rs. 2,275 crore has been incurred upto March, 2020.
2. 01 Doubling project of 27 km length costing Rs. 347 crore has been commissioned recently in January, 2021.

Presently, there is no ongoing Railway project falling fully / partly in Ladakh.

The completion of any Railway project depends on various factors like quick land acquisition by State Government, forest clearance by officials of forest department, shifting of infringing utilities (both underground and over ground), statutory clearances from various authorities, geological and topographical conditions of area, law and order situation in the area of project site, number of working months in a year for particular project site due to climatic considerations etc. All these factors vary from project to project and site to site which affect the completion time and cost of the project, which is finally worked out at the completion stage. As such, confirmed completion time of projects cannot be ascertained at this stage; nevertheless, every effort is being made to commission the projects expeditiously.

Funds are not allocated State-wise. However, Zone-wise detail of projects including their cost, expenditure and Budget outlays are made available in public domain on Indian Railways website i.e. www.indianrailways.gov.in >Ministry of Railways >Railway Board >About Indian Railways >Railway Board Directorates >Finance(Budget) >Railway wise Works Machinery & Rolling Stock Programme.

This information was given by the Minister of Railways, Commerce & Industry and Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution, Shri Piyush Goyal in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.