National Rail Vikas Yojana

Indian Railways is celebrating its 150^th anniversary this year. A befitting way to pay tribute to this great institution, which has contributed immensely to India’s economic progress and national integration, is to put it on a path of fast-track growth.

The Government is drawing up an important non-budgetary investment initiative for the development of Indian Railways, to be called the National Rail Vikas Yojana.

Under this, all the capacity bottlenecks in the critical sections of the railway network will be removed at an investment of Rs. 15,000 crore over the next five years. These projects would include

· Strengthening of the Golden Quadrilateral to enable Railways to run more long-distance mail/express trains and freight trains at a higher speed of 100 kmph, at a cost of Rs. 8,000 crore;

· Strengthening of rail connectivity to ports and development of multimodal corridors to hinterland, at a cost of Rs. 3,000 crore;

· Construction of four mega bridges — two over the River Ganga, one over River Brahmaputra, and one over the River Kosi — at a cost of Rs. 3,500 crore;

· Accelerated completion of last mile and other important projects, at a cost of Rs. 763 crore.

Today, there are sanctioned projects worth Rs. 40,000 crores, which have been languishing for a long time. At the present rate of allocation, it will take more than 25 years to complete them.

The Government has decided to draw up a plan to complete all the viable Sanctioned Railway Projects within the next 10 years.

Indian Railways will launch "Operation Cleanliness" to significantly improve the standards of sanitation at railway stations, on platforms and inside railway compartments.

Work on the Rs. 3,564-crore project for constructing the Udhampur to Baramulla railway line in Jammu & Kashmir will be given on a single-tender basis to IRCON and Konkan Railway Corporation Limited, which have an excellent track record of undertaking construction of railway projects in difficult terrain. As announced by the Prime Minister, during his recent visit to Srinagar, the first train would roll into Kashmir Valley before August 15, 2007.

EXTRACT FROM PIB RELEASE REGARDING PRIME MINISTER'S 15 IMPORTANT INITIATIVES ON INDEPENDENCE DAY 2002 (http://www.pib.nic.in/)