Prime Minister Modi believes that a better railway can change India’s economy to a large extent. And that’s one of the reasons why PM is himself looking after the implementation of the strategies adapted for railways.
Keeping this mind, the railways have finally marked projects to be funded by the Rs 1.5-lakh-crore loan that Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) is extending for the next 5 years.
Being cash strapped in most of the sectors, the railways took time to decide where to invest the fund. The insurer while lending the money had conditioned that only financially viable projects needed to boosted with the money as a Rate of Return of 14% is needed. Now it has shortlisted 24 corridors for expansion and strengthening from the loan money.
"Since the priority of railway minister Suresh Prabhu is network decongestion, 24 congested corridors have been identified where LIC funds will be utilized. Most of the sections in the corridors will yield a high RoR, going as high as 48% like the Rajkharsawan-Sini section in the Howrah-Mumbai corridor," a railway official has said.
While the corridors chosen for improvement with the fund includes Howrah-Channai, Delhi-Howrah, Howrah-Mumbai, Delhi-Chennai, Chennai-Mumbai and Mumbai-Delhi, a few other corridors like highly congested Amritsar-Ludhiana-Saharanpur-Moradabad-Lucknow-Sultanpur-Zafrabad-Mughalsarai-Varanasi route has also been added.
Mughalsarai in Northern Railways, is by far the most congested section and needs to be decongested at the earliest. It is over utilized than its capacity.
The railways are confident that the work will be completed as per laid down timelines.
Earlier the prime constraint for any work project was money as mostly some lakhs or few crores weren’t sufficient enough for taking any big project.